By now a significant number of us have experienced the self-imposed hardship and uncertainty of being sick but unsure if it’s the rona. TPM Reader DS writes in from Seattle:

Hi Josh. I was just reading your piece about testing, and thought to contribute a personal anecdote about what widespread testing would mean for people and families with relatively mild cases.
Continue reading “Living In Fear Of The Rona” →

President Trump says he hopes to have the country back to normal operation by Easter – which is less than three weeks away. He also says his insistence on doing so is helping push up the stock market.

Prez Trump says stock market rising because he insists on reopening the country. Says he expects to go back to normal in two weeks. pic.twitter.com/VmEUHC6oL6

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 24, 2020

We’re back to that familiar place: President Trump introduces a claim or argument or policy so absurd it risks crowding out an actual critical question. Here that question is how to balance the public health crisis and our efforts to contain it with damage to the economy over time. The simple reality is that the cost in human lives and the economic damage will both be vast. Nor are they a zero sum. The economy wouldn’t keep humming along amidst a public health catastrophe even if we all managed to be totally indifferent – individually and collectively – to the threat we faced by going about business as usual. It is also true that economic privation has predictable costs in human lives – unemployment, stress-driven ailments, family breakdown, suicide.

Continue reading “Not A President For When A Crisis Hits” →