The people hold the power, but we need to act quickly.
The people hold the power, but we need to act quickly.
S ometimes it seems like the pandemic that started in Wuhan in the winter of 2019 has held us in its cold grip all the way until now. Even if you’ve been trying to live as if the restrictions don’t exist, avoiding them is itself the tribute that the disease extracts from us. But I have a deep hope for a spring recovery. The smell of fresh-cut turf. The sight of yellow bloom in the forsythia. Children playing kickball in the street. And chemtrails daubed across the sky.
At least the last one seems to be coming back. The Transportation Security Administration says it screened 1,543,115 people at airports last Sunday, a pandemic-era record. For those who don’t know: Full flights have been running almost the entire time during the pandemic. But the number of flights is still down dramatically. TSA screenings are 53 percent below where they were in March 2019. Business travel is still cratered as people still resort to conferencing through digital technology. And international travel is much reduced, as many countries maintain strict and enforced border controls. But we are seeing an upward trajectory, and not a moment too soon.
Putting the economy on its own momentum and restoring social life is now a footrace between the people and public-health authorities. And it really matters who wins this one and where. The sooner that the people overcome their fears, go out, travel, eat at restaurants, pay off their drug dealers, pray at a church, meet strangers, and marry or be given in marriage, the less time public-health authorities have to institute safety measures as an inducement to do so.
That is, the people must begin rushing back to real life before public-health authorities, hypochondriacs, and other sad, deluded people try to wrap the whole world in “health-passport” technology, and plexiglass. We need to go back before the “health-tech” entrepreneurs figure out a way to hook up instant-read thermometers to the locking system on every revolving door. We need to start demanding enough travel abroad before other nations, desperate for tourism, start instituting the Chinese anal swab every time you visit your abuela in the old country. This is the only way to prevent a public-health proviso from being tacked above what we normally think of as the Bill of Rights or the American way of life.
We have already lost some major metropolitan school districts in this race. Where teachers’ unions have been able to slow up and halt reopening, the conditions for reopening go higher and higher. New ventilation systems. Not one mask, but two. United Teachers of Los Angeles voted against another “premature” opening of schools until their demands for spacing are met. They want “a cleaning regimen” instituted before returning to work, something that we’ve known for the better part of a year does not reduce COVID transmission because COVID is not primarily spread by droplets on surfaces.
And make no mistake about it — this race is an economic calculation. Almost all the major players in the entertainment and service industries and many beyond will be recruited to one side of the argument or to the other in the next few months as people are vaccinated. And it’s the bottom line that will convince them.
Either these institutions will view the public-health technologies, permission slips, and terms of service as impediments to opening business, or as their last lifeline to a huge portion of their potential customers. Businesses, civil institutions, and churches that see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel soon will view an ongoing post-pandemic COVID infrastructure as a potential obstacle, maybe even an expensive one, that keeps away customers who no longer want to be hassled about their body temperature, or asked about their recent travel and medical history. They will lobby against instituting it, or introduce roadblocks to ever implementing it in the first place.
But some sectors of the economy, or individual institutions that are struggling to rebuild what they lost in 2019, may view Dr. Anthony Fauci and his disciples as ongoing allies. They may become allies of an ongoing public-health regime reaching into everyday life, because they will see it as a reassurance that is necessary to bring in skittish customers and patrons.
Also, the sooner that school districts, states, or countries show to the satisfaction of their people that normal life is possible — so long as they accept the normal risks of life — the sooner other districts, states, and countries will feel a little pressure to return to business, too.
Andrew Cuomo is already trying out his state’s developing health-passport system on the NBA arenas of New York City. Every hotel, wedding-banquet hall, and even church could be outfitted with absurd rules about touching surfaces, crowding near your friends and potential lovers, or eating with plexiglass in between you and your spouse’s face. But it doesn’t have to be that way, so long as we get out there first.