Unsanitized: Protests Disrupt An Already Shaky Pandemic Trajectory

Plus, now is not the time for deficit hawkery. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for June 2, 2020.

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First Response

I have said before that you cannot cleanly separate the New Days of Rage from the pandemic. The fact that the NYPD issued nearly all its “social distancing” tickets on black and brown people gives testimony to how policing is used as a measure of social control, to grind a population down, to pressure it until it explodes. Add to that short-term mass joblessness and long-term uncertainty, the daily pressure and anxiety, the feeling that the pandemic is a culmination of systemic failure, and the conditions are primed for that to explode. Social unrest was maybe not inevitable but highly likely.

Led by a reactionary president who only processes things in terms of strength and weakness, the deliberate provocations and state-sponsored violence and positioning of this as a counter-terrorism operation will only escalate this situation, and I don’t see a way out in the near term.

In the medium term, the question is whether the locus will shift from the streets to the hospitals. To what extent will mass outdoor gatherings of people in close proximity create clusters and spikes in coronavirus infections? I’m not sure that the evidence is so clear-cut, and we should distinguish between what is happening.

Read all of our Unsanitized reports

On the one hand, there are thousands of people in the streets all across America, engaging in activities known to cause viral spread: droplets from shouting and chanting, coughing and sneezing from tear gas and pepper spray, constant touching of the nose and mouth from the same. The protesters are definitely risking their health, though obviously you can say that they’re risking their health also by staying silent. Those coming out to these protests may be younger, but in terms of race and socioeconomic status correlate with those disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and could bring home infections to their older family members.

You can see that case made here, here, and here. Historically, there’s a parallel with the Liberty Loan parades during WWI in places like Philadelphia, which definitely spread the Spanish flu.

But there are some mitigating factors. First, these are not indoor events, and the coronavirus in particular seems less potent in outdoor settings. There also appears to be widespread masking at the events. Arresting and locking up protesters brings people indoors, into some of the worst environments for the disease, of course (that and the use of environmental weapons like pepper spray and mace make a mockery of “public safety” officers during a pandemic). How people get to the protests, like through mass transit, could also be a problem.

However, as many people there are coming out to these protests, far more are staying home in kind of a second forced lockdown, staying off the streets of these cities. Mobility rates in selected major U.S. cities are flat or down in many cases, suggesting that the curfews and generalized fear is offsetting the increased activity. While the protests could be superspreader events, less people out and about more generally might reduce spread.

The flip side of that is that many testing sites have been disabled out of caution, meaning we will have an even less clear sense of the virus’ trajectory in the next week. This hasn’t shown up in the data so far because it takes some time to process tests. But those testing numbers are going to go way down. So one thing we definitely know is that we’re not likely to see the cluster through case counts, though hospitalizations and deaths are another story.

The relaxation of social distancing was already in effect in much of the country before George Floyd’s death. It will not be easy to separate out rising cases from normal everyday activities and protest events. But the unrest has created a second wave of economic pain for consumer-facing businesses. In affected cities, thousands of restaurants and shops opened up, only to have to close again. What does this mean for recalled workers who now aren’t on unemployment and aren’t getting hours at work? And what does it mean for economic recovery; could this tip smaller businesses over the edge of bankruptcy if it lingers? The handful of vandalized stores notwithstanding, just the costs of boarding up indefinitely could be prohibitive.

Protests have definitely stunted the growth of recovery and will require more fiscal intervention. Whether they send COVID-19 cases soaring remains to be seen.

Odds and Sods

I was on with RJ Eskow at This is the Zero Hour talking about the Federal Reserve bailout. Watch here.

At the Prospect today we have a terrific piece from Brian Highsmith about defunding what he calls the “punishment bureaucracy,” the police, corrections, and judicial spending that makes up nearly half of local budgets. Replacing that infrastructure with new critical interventions that help communities thrive (see Eugene, Oregon’s mental health first responders) would be cost-effective, particularly given the collapse of local revenues in the pandemic, and would have no effect on crime (see New York’s lower crime rates when the police went on “strike.”). There’s been a bubble in these types of pieces, and I think this one stands out. Check it out.

Also, Paul Starr breaks down the Supreme Court’s surprising upholding of an order allowing public safety restrictions on large gatherings in houses of worship. And Bob Kuttner frets about how a heavily vote-by-mail election due to infection fears will not be decided on election night, and how that will lead to claims of rigging.

You can read all of our coronavirus coverage at prospect.org/coronavirus. And I’m happy to get your thoughts and tips; email me here.

When the Fourth Trillion is Too Far

Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the next ten years will see lower gross output of nearly $16 trillion because of the effects of the economic depression brought on by the coronavirus crisis. It will take nearly a decade to get back on the pre-crisis trajectory, and that lost demand will never be regained, according to CBO’s estimates.

Considering that Mitch McConnell is out there saying that the next crisis response bill will be the last, the prediction that we’ll have wasted potential forever seems apt. But it’s worse than just not filling the gap: the most innumerate people in the government, in both parties, want to make things actively worse.

A letter from 60 New Dems and Tea Partiers, 30 of each, has decided this is the perfect moment to address “the pressing issue of the national debt.” The country has just spent close to $3 trillion on crisis response and the biggest inflation-related problem has been its polar opposite: deflation due to oil price weirdness. (Prices have bounced back but only by drillers saying “we won’t drill for any oil,” which won’t last.) Specifically, the bipartisan deficit hawks fear “trust fund insolvency,” a way to favor cutting Social Security without having to say its name. Specifically, they want to trigger special committees to recommend fast-track “rescues” that will inevitably deprive the vulnerable.

With the only thing holding up the economy about to expire in two months, this is the worst possible time to scaremonger about the deficit. This 1937 mentality will cause widespread suffering and yes, more death. You cannot put shackles on the spender of last resort right now. This kind of thing makes the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget giddy (indeed, their statement exults: “It’s heartening to see dozens of members from both parties recognize the threat of our rising national debt and make clear their intention to tackle this challenge once the time is right”), but should make us all deeply afraid.

Today I Learned

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