When to go Back

There's been quite a bit of discourse within my media sphere about when it will be safe to return to work - or in the parlance of the Right: restart the economy.  I get it, there are pressures from all over to get back to the old normal.  I can't imagine there's much of anyone that likes the new normal.  (Mrs. TANBI says Pizza Hut is having a great new normal, so maybe it isn't everyone.)  The President and most Red State Governors want to get things going again as soon as possible.

For more than a week now there have been people protesting at state capitals demanding to be let back to their old lifestyle.  More than anything else it seems like people are demanding to be able to get a haircut.  One assumes that while this is a practical matter that it is also somewhat tongue in cheek.  The central theme with this group seems to be about small businesses at risk of going under.  Maybe not so much about getting a haircut as about giving haircuts.  There's also a fair number of people who are convinced that this group is actually secretly motivated by owners of large businesses that are upset about their ability to continue to make money off of low wage earners: not so much about getting a haircut or giving a haircut, but rather about opening your chain of salons.  Probably something to that too.

There's also the more than likely possibility that most of these people are being motivated by stories in their news feed that are being propagated by troll accounts just looking to sow discord.  More than four years later we're still not good at evaluating our information sources and the companies that provide that information aren't much better at it either.

Somehow this gets conflated with many other causes.  There are gun owners afraid their rights are being trampled by the closing of gun stores or ranges.  There are anti-vaxxers trying to show us how right they have always been.  There are home schoolers upset that people are calling distance learning home schooling (some teachers too, although not at the protests).

Today I heard that the push to get open again is coming from Right Wing legislators who want to get people off of public assistance.  If your job is shut down you can go on unemployment, but if your job is there but you are afraid to go in then you are essentially quitting and not eligible for unemployment.  Similarly if you own a business and the government shuts you down that may make you able to collect on some insurance you may be carrying, but if it isn't the government but rather your own good judgement that has you closed then you can't make that collection.

The metrics around opening things up are tied up in a vaccine, although that is far off, or in testing, contact tracing, and social distancing modifications.  From what I hear we're not nearly close enough to the capacity we need to be able to come back to normal measuring by those metrics.  From where I sit I think there might be some other things that should be considered.  Maybe we ought not restore things to normal until you can walk into a Rite-Aid and buy some hand sanitizer.  Maybe we ought to hold on to our enthusiasm until you can walk into a Home Depot and buy a box of N95 masks.  Perhaps we ought to stay home until you can walk into a Target and buy a can of Lysol or a (is it a jar?) of Clorox Wipes.

(I recognize there is likely a Catch 22 in this suggestion in that we may never get a reasonable quantity of those items before we send people back to work.  Navigating that is likely a significant challenge of these times.)

Clearly we're not ready by any of those standards.  But we're opening up in PA, at least a little bit, next week.  Guess we'll see if that works out or not.