Patience Will Run Out

An article at Real Clear Politics notes that the American public, never known for its patience, is unlikely to tolerate the current business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders for long.  (RCP Article)  I suspect this is particularly true because sooner or later most people will figure out that 1) they were fed a bunch of misinformation about the risks to them of contracting the disease (which for healthy, working age people are negligible) and that 2) policymakers completely ignored the likely impacts of these shutdown orders.  There is really no reason for the vast majority of the public not to go about their lives as they did before.  There is no “danger”, as our Governor is fond of threatening us with, unless you consider getting a mild cold dangerous, in returning to work sites or public places.  Sweden’s approach looks more and more attractive, get yourself to natural immunity with as little damage as possible.  We, on the other hand, seemed determined to destroy our economy, to modestly delay the ultimate spread of the virus.  We are completely undermining our health system, putting governments that we depend on for health in a very dangerous financial position and ruining the future for out students by interrupting their studies.  All for no good reason.  But don’t expect policymakers to change quickly; they are not going to admit they made a mistake.