Unsanitized: Fighting the Virus With the Equivalent of Finger-Crossing

Plus, a Senate hearing on unemployment. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for June 10, 2020.

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First Response

Yesterday, we learned that two D.C. National Guard members who were part of the response to protests after the death of George Floyd tested positive for COVID-19. Given the typical gestation period, it’s possible they caught the virus during the mass demonstrations, but a bit more likely that they already had it in their system beforehand. They join two members of the National Guard who responded to protests in Lincoln, Nebraska, and a maskless protester in Lawrence, Kansas, all of whom have tested positive.

The latter received a test on June 4, and participated in the protest May 31, so he almost certainly already had the virus when he went out in public with thousands of people without a mask to peaceably assemble. (We know that because of contact tracing; he was asked about mask use.) Many of those protests have not been so peaceful, with police using tear gas and pepper spray, causing more emissions through sneezing and coughing. And lots of police aren’t wearing masks, which is more harmful to others than themselves. In general masks are optional in the field.

Nobody wants to say it; politicians are walking on eggshells over it. But it’s just very obvious that a decent sample of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who have attended protests in the past couple weeks either had coronavirus when they marched or contracted it on site. If you ask people directly they understand this; an Axios/Ipsos poll showed that 86 percent of those surveyed fear infection during mass protests. That hasn’t stopped large crowds from gathering, though. And that’s going to make this crisis worse; it just is. How much worse is an open question; worse is undeniable.

Read all of our Unsanitized reports

Ironically, fears of demonstration have made other, more routine, and perhaps just as dangerous events look more mundane by comparison. People are flooding casinos, and anyone so in need of gambling action that they don’t wait a week for reopening to return to the tables is maybe going to take unnecessary risks by nature. But AMC plans to reopen “almost all” its theaters next month; the level of the outbreak in a particular state seems to not be playing a role in that decision. Restaurants and retail shops and dental offices are engaged in modified openings. Mobility is up about 20 percentage points off the bottom. And the results are trickling in; Tesla workers forced back in Elon Musk’s revolutionary reopening fantasy are starting to test positive.

We’re all guilty of letting our guard down. I got a haircut yesterday. I’m right there with you. I wore a mask, as did the barber, and I got a temperature check before entering. But these are nods at protection. My state and my county is seeing cases and deaths steadily rise, and while some of that is due to increased testing—the widely linked Washington Post study about 14 states hitting a high on their seven-day average of cases doesn’t mention testing at all—in states like Arizona, cases are rising faster than tests. More important, hospitalizations are on the rise in nine states. And most states are not making progress toward reopening safely, judged by testing, tracing, and hospital readiness.

The protests will make things worse, but the everyday nonchalance, the surrender to the virus, might do even more. The virus doesn’t care if you consider your cause just or you have to get the mounds of hair off your head (really, it was getting ridiculous); it just will travel from host to host. The good news is that the aggregate statistics have been gradually getting better, but that snapshot is about two or three weeks downstream from the infection point, and it says nothing about individual states. It’s also just capturing a portion of overall cases, sicknesses, and deaths.

The maligned University of Washington study is finally pointing out that the virus will not burn out by August (it now has 550 deaths on its final projected day, August 4). It’s just going to be living with us in the background now. We’ve decided that it’s worth dying to live normally. We decided that with access to guns, we’ve decided that with the coronavirus. The White House decided it a long time ago, and now the rest of us have taken our cues. And I see no reason to believe that Americans will be asked to lock down again or that they’ll comply.

What we know about this virus is that we don’t know everything, or even very much. Maybe there won’t be a new spike; maybe we can be a lot more comfortable about outdoor transmission; maybe the virus has mutated into something harder to spread, or humidity and sunshine are factors. But we have no idea today, and our actions, regardless of our intentions, signal that we don’t care about our friends, or families, and ourselves.

Clock Ticks on the Superdole

I listened yesterday to a Senate Finance Committee hearing with Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, about the enhanced unemployment program from the CARES Act, which now has about a month and a half left to run. The battle lines between the parties have been drawn. Republicans almost unanimously said the program has run its course and now creates a “disincentive” to work, because you can make more money on the dole than at a low-wage job. Hilariously, Bill Cassidy (R-AK) cited Larry Summers on this point.

Democrats almost unanimously said that there are still 20 million Americans out of work, and no reason to expect that all or even most of them will be gainfully employed by July 31, the expiration date of the CARES Act enhancement. “The nearly 2 million unemployment claims filed last week tripled the number of any claims filed in any week during the Great Recession,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), an architect of the enhanced unemployment program. “Big corporations are getting trillions of dollars in support to weather this crisis, but Congress is going to start pinching pennies when the little guy needs help?”

The answer to that is yes. Scalia, repeating the White House line, said that the CARES act benefits should not be “a deterrent to resuming work.” At the same time, he touted the 2.5 million gain in the May jobs report, which happened while enhanced unemployment was in place. The deterrent story and the celebration of America returning to work don’t fit together.

Wyden’s questions signal where Democrats could be headed on the question. He repeatedly asked Scalia if states had the capability to implement 100 percent wage replacement on an individual level for workers. Scalia dodged the question every time. Wyden also talked about aligning unemployment support to economic conditions, a sort of “trigger” where benefits stay in place until state rates of unemployment fall below a certain level. (Economist Dean Baker has also suggested tying the enhancement to pandemic control, which is pretty tenuous since spikes can happen quickly.)

Scalia threw it back on Congress, which set the enhancement to expire by July 31. And he’s right; the automatic stabilizer should have been negotiated from the beginning. But responding to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), the other architect of the program, Scalia acknowledged that having tens of millions on unemployment after July 31 without a boost was untenable. “It does make sense for us to consider, particularly as we get close to that July 31 date, what measures may be necessary.”

Scalia’s Labor Department also includes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and Democrats landed most of their punches here. Scalia kept talking about the guidances his department has put out for workplaces but they’re all voluntary. He admitted to Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) that OSHA has received as many as 20,000 complaints and made only one citation against a workplace for hazardous post-pandemic work conditions. “Nobody should have to choose between their health and their income,” Wyden said, noting that Americans have the right to stay on unemployment if the workplace they’re asked to return to is “unsuitable.”

Scalia tried to say that state law governs workplace safety, which was amazing (and rather untrue), and that a rejection of an unsafe workplace “needs to be rooted in facts, not just a generalized fear.” He would not commit to putting in writing that nobody can lose unemployment benefits because of an unsafe workplace. This will probably play out in the courts.

Today I Learned

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