For months now, American workers, families and small businesses have been saying they can't keep up their socially distanced lives for much longer. We've now arrived at "much longer" — and the pandemic isn't going away anytime soon. The big picture: The relief policies and stopgap measures that we cobbled together to get us through the toughest weeks worked for a while, but they're starting to crumble just as cases are spiking in the majority of states. Next week, the extra $600 per week in expanded unemployment benefits will expire. And there's no indication that Congress has reached a consensus on extending this assistance or providing anything in its place. But nearly half of the U.S. population is still jobless, and millions will remain jobless for the foreseeable future. There are 14 million more unemployed people than there are jobs, per the Economic Policy Institute. Nearly a third of Americans missed a housing payment in July — and that was with the additional $600. Plus, most Americans have already spent the stimulus checks they received at the beginning of the pandemic. "We should be very concerned about what’s going to happen in August and beyond" — starting with a spike in evictions, Mathieu Despard, who leads the Social Policy Institute at the Washington University in St. Louis, tells Axios. Expect more furloughs and layoffs as more small businesses are pushed off the pandemic cliff. By economists' estimates, more than 100,000 small businesses have permanently closed since the pandemic began. For those that are hanging on, loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) have not been enough, and the back and forth between re-opening and then closing again as states deal with new case waves has been devastating. In fact, rates of closure have started increasing, the New York Times reports, citing Yelp data. The big firms aren't immune either. Just last week, behemoths like United Airlines, Wells Fargo, Walgreens and Levi's either cut jobs or told workers their jobs were at risk, Axios' Dion Rabouin writes. And the question of whether schools will reopen looms. Since schools sent kids home in March, and most summer camps didn't open their doors for the summer, working parents have been dealing with a child care crisis — attempting to do their jobs, care for their kids and homeschool all at once — and hoping that the stress will be temporary. The situation is more dire for low-income families with kids who rely on school lunches or for single parents who are juggling work and parenting without any help. Now the public heath crisis hasn't abated, and school districts are running out of time to figure out what the fall will look like. Some, starting with Los Angeles, have already decided to go online. The bottom line: "It’s the uncertainty that is anxiety-inducing," says Despard. "If you give people a time horizon and say, 'Look you have to get through these next 8 weeks of extreme shutdown,' they'll do it. Now it’s like, 'How much longer?'"
Donnie will push to keep the money train going. The GOP doesn't care about buying votes or how much it costs. The dems will of course concede as they'll be painted to be the bad guys if they obstruct. It's why the GOP is pushing for no cap. gains tax as a condition for the help
It's weird how this is being strung into Trump's fault. Truly a sign of the election season. Where I live we are about to go back to nearly full lockdown. Trump didn't call for this. The lockdowns are destroying jobs and eventually we have to look at the hard numbers and see if it's worth it. No one wants to ask the real questions but we need to start looking at this as insurance adjusters. Is the total economic cost of going into more lockdowns going to exceed the economic burden of sick people? This is simple mathematics. If nearly 98% of all COVID-19 cases resolve as nothing more than an uncomfortable cold take 2% of the US population and assume all of these people will require some serious medical intervention. Take the average cost of a few days stay (ventilators are uncommon but supplementary oxygen isn't) and split the difference, we'll call it around $25,000 a person. This seems reasonable for a few nights in a hospital with x-rays, blood work, and oxygen. This comes out to around a burden of 158 billion dollars. Let's be generous and say 200 billion to account for ventilated people. Economists have estimated the total burden of coronavirus due to job loss to be in excess of 7 trillion dollars. I took quite a few math classes in college and I can tell you with certainty 7 trillion is an order of magnitude larger than 200 billion. The argument "but people will die" is stupid and an appeal to emotion. If expect to survive this and not turn into a failed state we need to look and compare the economic burdens. A real insurance adjustment would include increases in "deaths of despair" including numbers on alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide. The economic toll of keeping the country closed is going to end up killing more people. This makes no sense to me for a few reasons. To preface this, I have family and friends that work with K-12 kids and their experiences are grim: Online classes have around a 30% participation rate in my district. Teachers are calling parents to get kids to go, but there are two factors that are outside of the school's control: poor parenting, and busy parenting. Poor parenting is obviously the most nefarious and is akin to just not having to educate your kid. Busy parenting is more subtle but manifests itself as "here Timmy sit on the computer and go to class while I go to work". Children on average are not responsible. It's not their fault. No child is. Leaving your K-12 kid alone to work on school work is recipe for disaster. Classes are set up in such a way that "follow the leader" type "tribalism" actually works to the benefit. Generally the slackers will pick up the work if all their friends are doing it too. Taking advantage of this requires in person classwork. It just doesn't work online. Humans are social creatures. Children, being in development, are especially vulnerable to a lack of socialization that schools provide. It's incredibly important to their development into well adjusted adults. Moreover, school is often a form of daycare for parents. The burden of having children go to school online is yet another economic burden we are being forced to bear. Frankly I think the teacher's union has a lot to do with this. There are plenty of young, healthy K-12 teachers that can catch COVID and recover in less than a week. Now would be a good time to force your oldest cohort into retirement by offering them perhaps a sweetheart deal on their pensions and bring in a less risky group. This is not about "teachers are being put in danger". Their jobs are essential, no less than a policeman or a doctor. They signed up for this - it's time they show up to earn their pay. The schools must open.
Here it is from a Republican's mouth, you know, an actual conservative and not a TV show host. Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who is rumored to be eyeing a 2024 presidential run, lit into the White House Thursday in a biting Washington Post essay. In the piece, Hogan accused President Trump of failing to help his state in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, and of focusing on himself instead of the American people. Hogan wrote that with the White House abdicating its responsibility to help states secure tests earlier this year, he turned to his wife for help. Born and raised in South Korea, Yumi Hogan helped Maryland set up a deal to buy half a million test kits from a company in Seoul. Trump criticized Hogan for the deal. The essay isn’t Hogan’s first public criticism of Trump’s coronavirus response. The chair of the National Governors Association, Hogan said in April that the Trump administration was being dishonest by blaming governors for the lack of testing. Later that month, after Trump seemed to suggest ingesting disinfectant to kill the coronavirus, Hogan said, “I think when misinformation comes out or you just say something that pops in your head, it does send a wrong message.” For an elected Republican talking about Trump, that’s what passes for a scathing rebuke. And that’s what makes the Post piece so notable. It actually is a scathing rebuke. Here are the most withering lines: On the Maryland State Police escorting tests to a “secure warehouse at an undisclosed location”: “The federal government had recently seized 3 million N95 masks purchased by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. We weren’t going to let Washington stop us from helping Marylanders.” On giving up on waiting from Trump’s help: “Eventually, it was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation’s response was hopeless; if we delayed any longer, we’d be condemning more of our citizens to suffering and death.” On the White House setting up a testing regime in the U.S.: “While other countries were racing ahead with well-coordinated testing regimes, the Trump administration bungled the effort.” On Trump’s priorities in March and April: “Meanwhile, instead of listening to his own public health experts, the president was talking and tweeting like a man more concerned about boosting the stock market or his reelection plans.” On Trump’s treatment of governors: “We expected something more than constant heckling from the man who was supposed to be our leader.” On the futility of looking to Trump for help: “It was hopeless, waiting around for him.” On Trump’s response to Maryland landing half a million tests from South Korea: “I thought we might get a congratulatory word from the president. Trump always had a taste for bold gestures — but, apparently, only for bold gestures he could claim.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202...ngton-post-essay-the-most-scathing-lines.html
I'm not going to say im absolving Trump of any guilt here. Do not interpret it as that. I was simply stating that being forced into further lockdowns didn't come from the president himself. Governors are taking it upon themselves, without considering the numbers, to lockdown again.
Still sounds like a bunch of excuse making. "Guys, Donnie, didn't take this seriously so shit got out of hand, GOP governors & redhats followed his lead and now that we're facing a reckoning and our only option is to shut down, let's just ignore a big part of the original problem"
It's weird how you're basically absolving California, Washington and New York from guilt here. If we removed those three states our numbers would look great!
If the first lockdown was done properly without the mixed messaging and the bullshit, there wouldn't have been any reasons for another one - look at Europe and compare it to US and Brazil - run by dumb right wingers who didn't take the pandemic seriously.