Resisting the New Normal: Their Pandemic and Ours
Those in charge are waging a war of attrition on the rest of us.
I can remember New York City the week before quarantine with a clarity that feels enviable from today’s vantage point. As terrible and scary as those days were, constantly pierced by the sounds of sirens, there was a shared sense of purpose and urgency.
The tasks were clear: stay inside unless you were an essential worker, going out only for groceries, medication or exercise; wash your hands constantly; sanitize everything that came through the door; check in on the elderly, the vulnerable and your own loved ones. If we could do these things faithfully, together we could “flatten the curve” and avoid mass death.
Now, however, we are almost two months in and that terrifying clarity has given way to a mounting sense of dread and creeping confusion about what comes next. Conflicting and shifting modeling predictions about how many deaths to expect have finally converged into something approaching a consensus.
But these predictions are based on the status quo of existing social distancing orders. They are not able to account yet for what happens if various aspects of the economy are re-opened. And yet, as new infection rates have peaked, that is precisely what is beginning to happen…
