Below is a monthly update, marking key metrics and commentary in from mid-June to mid-July, the fourth month since lockdowns began.
Polling Round Up
More people became concerned about COVID infection this month. According to Gallup (July 6-12) , people who are Some-Very Worried of contracting the virus rose to 53%, a 4 point increase over last month. And the people are are worried about Financial Hardship is now 50-50, a 6 point increase from the month before.
The Five Thirty Eight Tracker, which averages all COVID polls, found a 3.7% increase in people who are worried about the virus.
On July 15, only 38% of the country approved of Trump’s handling of the crisis. The approval spread increased from 12% underwater to 19.3% underwater, with 57.5% disapproving. This month was the highest jump in that spread.
Political Weirding
Cases began to climb this month: “Nationwide, cases have risen 15 percent over the last two weeks. Cases are rising in 18 states across the South, West and Midwest. Seven states hit single-day case records Saturday, and five others hit a record earlier in the week.”
Trump urged for a slowdown in testing at the Tulsa rally (June 20), and resumed rhetorically connecting the virus with China, calling it Kung Flu.
Dr. Fauci and three other leaders of the government’s coronavirus response who testified on Tuesday (June 21) cast a cloud over the sunny accounts offered by the president as he has portrayed the United States as a nation bouncing back from the brink…. “The next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surges that we are seeing in Florida, in Texas, in Arizona and other states,” Dr. Fauci added.
By midweek the crisis in southern and western states was clear. Arizona testing centers were slammed and unable to process all the test requests: The United States’ coronavirus testing capacity has begun to strain as the pandemic continues to spread, with over 35,000 cases recorded Tuesday. Across the country, more than a dozen public laboratories say they are now “challenged” to meet the demand.
The Atlantic: Yesterday [June 23], the U.S. reported 38,672 new cases of the coronavirus, the highest daily total so far. Ignore any attempt to explain away what is happening: The American coronavirus pandemic is once again at risk of spinning out of control. A new and brutal stage now menaces the Sun Belt states, whose residents face a nearly unbroken chain of outbreaks stretching from South Carolina to California. Across the South and large parts of the West, cases are soaring, hospitalizations are spiking, and a greater portion of tests are coming back positive.
This Atlantic piece is a good summary of the Sunbelt spikes, listing all the key data metrics. It is also an important historical record of the politics that lead to the spikes: what unites some of the most troublesome states is the all-or-nothing approach they took to pandemic suppression. The stay-at-home order in Texas, for instance, lifted on April 30. A day later, the state allowed nearly all of its businesses and public spaces—stores, malls, churches, restaurants, and movie theaters—to open with limited capacity. …A form of wishful thinking seemed to drive these decisions: If the virus could be ignored, then it might go away altogether….Eventually, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas and Governor Doug Ducey* of Arizona went even further, blocking cities and counties from implementing any pandemic-related restriction more stringent than that required by the state….Both governors finally reversed those policies last week. (“To state the obvious, COVID-19 is now spreading at an unacceptable rate in Texas, and it must be corralled,” Abbot said at a press conference on Monday. This had not been obvious to the governor less than a week earlier, when he told Texans that the state’s record-breaking number of new infections was “no reason today to be alarmed.”)
On testing: National testing capacity has expanded significantly since the start of the pandemic, recently reaching half a million daily tests. Federal health officials testified at a congressional hearing this week that the country has the capacity to do 15 million coronavirus tests per month; they expect that number to reach 40 million to 50 million by the fall. Experts have estimated that at least 500,000 coronavirus tests daily are what the country needs to safely reopen.
New York Times: For the first time, some governors are backtracking on reopening their states, issuing new restrictions for parts of the economy that had resumed…. The decisions in Texas and Florida to revert to stronger restrictions represented the strongest acknowledgment yet that reopening had not gone as planned in two of the nation’s most populous states, where only days ago their Republican governors were adamantly resisting calls to close back down.
The New York Times has to add a “Reversing” designation to its tally of lockdown categories for the states.
Arizona: At critical junctures, blunders by top officials undermined faith in the data purportedly driving decision-making, according to experts monitoring Arizona’s response. And when forbearance was most required, as the state began to reopen despite continued community transmission, an abrupt and uniform approach — without transparent benchmarks or latitude for stricken areas to hold back — led large parts of the public to believe the pandemic was over.
And Texas halted its reopening plan: bars closed; indoor dining reduced from 75% to 50% capacity (“If I could go back and redo anything, it probably would have been to slow down the opening of bars,” Mr. Abbott said in an interview with KVIA-TV in El Paso on Friday evening.)
Florida: no alcohol sales; restaurants must remain at 50% capacity (new rules put on place Friday June 26)
Frum has a good history of the politics of the pandemic.
Republicans began encouraging mask wearing this week (of June 28).
This reporting by the Washington Post shows how Coronavirus is becoming central to both presidential campaigns: The [Trump campaign] goal is to convince Americans that they can live with the virus — that schools should reopen, professional sports should return, a vaccine is likely to arrive by the end of the year and the economy will continue to improve.
White House officials also hope Americans will grow numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day, according to three people familiar with the White House’s thinking, who requested anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. Americans will “live with the virus being a threat,” in the words of one of those people, a senior administration official.
As more school districts release their reopening plans for the fall: “I disagree with @CDCgov,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, a day after hosting a series of calls and events to pressure schools to reopen fully. “While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!”
During a coronavirus task force briefing later Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the C.D.C. would issue new recommendations next week.
An unreleased CDC report on schools: “While many jurisdictions and districts mention symptom screening, very few include information as to the response or course of action they would take if student/faculty/staff are found to have symptoms, nor have they clearly identified which symptoms they will include in their screening,” the talking points say. “In addition, few plans include information regarding school closure in the event of positive tests in the school community.”
By Friday (July 10) the death toll had begun to tick up nationally.
Some new restrictions were put back in place across the South and West:
Louisiana: no more indoor bars and restaurants, and outdoor mask requirement
South Carolina: no alcohol sales after 11pm
Las Vegas & Reno, Nevada: bars closed
New Mexico: no indoor dining
California closed all bars and indoor dining. Oregon issued an outdoor mask order.
In Georgia: On Friday, a day after suing the mayor of Atlanta for mandating virus-fighting rules that were stricter than his own, Gov. Brian Kemp said he would not stand down as the mayor’s “disastrous policies threaten the lives and livelihood of our citizens.” Mr. Kemp, a Republican, stood by his decision to sue Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and City Council members over their move to require masks and revert the city to the most restrictive reopening phase.
Sunday the New York Times released insider reporting on Trump April decision to downplay the virus and push responsibility to the states.
Economic Outlook:
Sewer interviewed people in some of the 10,000 cars who sat in a food line in Texas: Although a few had recently seen their finances improve, most had been struggling since the 2008 recession and the anemic recovery that followed. Very few of the people I spoke to saw a culprit—while some were inclined to blame the Trump administration, and others held the Chinese government responsible, the vast majority saw the pandemic as an unlikely event no one could have planned for.
He cites this statistic: Among those still employed, the pain has not been evenly distributed. More than half of those making less than $50,000 have seen their hours cut, compared with 36 percent of those making $50,000 to $100,000 and 28 percent of those making more than $100,000.
His close: Trump’s theft of the meager economic gains since the Great Recession may foil his bid for a second term. But if Biden takes office and fails to heed Roosevelt’s example, then he will be leaving the majority of Americans in the same place they were at the end of the last recession: defenseless against calamity. The vast queues of struggling Americans lining up for food will not just be the nation’s present, but its future.
Reviving the economy will be difficult. Reinvigorating American democracy will be much harder.
Annie Lowrey writing in the Atlantic forecasted the economic outlook: Retail sales rose 18 percent in May, and the economy added 2.5 million jobs. But absent dramatic policy action, a pandemic depression is possible: the Congressional Budget Office anticipates that the American economy will generate $8 trillion less in economic activity over the next decade than it projected just a few months ago, and that a full recovery might not take hold until the 2030s.
She concludes: Ending the pandemic would have been the single best thing the federal government could have done to preserve the country’s wealth, health, and economic functioning. The Trump administration, in its hubris, obstinacy, and incompetence, failed to do it.
Still, a second Great Depression is not inevitable.