Stigmata

I really, really try to avoid politics here, partially because it's a respite from my politics-infused life, and partly because politics is not what we do here.  

So I'm not going to talk politics.  However, I feel I must say this:  in this post, I will make a prediction about how things work.  It is a prediction that is being made by every professional and academic who knows anything about the topic.  It's a hard prediction to process, however, and it is being strongly opposed by political factions whose world-view will be damaged when it comes true.  They have responded by calling this prediction "political."  If politics is the last refuge of scoundrels, then this defense has always been the last refuge of scoundrel politicians.  It is not political, it is true.  I don't like it, the experts who assert it don't like it, no one likes it.  But it's true.

Perhaps we will let Inigo Montoya 'splain it:

In this case, the complex but right answer is also painful and damaging in many ways.  Here it is:

We will not reopen the economy successfully until we have firm control of the spread of the virus.  Controlling the spread of the virus will require extreme measures which will severely damage the economy in the short term.

Sounds simple, no?  Certainly, the reasons that it is true are complex and require some willingness to look at economics and epidemiology in a politics-free way.  But the new world - both when we get there, and what we find when we do - will depend on us understanding this simple truth.  

Right now, in the US at least, we are not acting as if this is true.  We're turning left, and maybe you can imagine a cliff just out of the frame in that direction.  

What is more human than doing the wrong thing to avoid short term pain?  The new world will bear the stigmata of the decisions we are making today.