Cuchi Cuchi. The Field. The Cantab Lounge. The Bergamont. Great Scott. The Eastern Standard. The Halibut Point Tavern. The Tumble Inn Diner. Bella Luna Milky Way.
These are just some of the businesses that have closed for good in the Greater Boston area during the Covid crisis. There are many more, but I decided to only list the places I’ve personally frequented and had fond memories in. From my hometown of Cambridge, my old neighborhood and after school watering hole in Boston, a Gloucester bar I had a much needed break from the heat in during last summers union canvassing, to a 70 year old diner in my new town of Saugus.
Not just our metro area either. Our favorite Filipino place in Chicago that became a default gathering place for all our college friends, an 80 year old deli where every Chicago mayor chewed the fat, all have closed or could close.
I’ve had disagreements with people opposed to the necessity and severity of the shutdown, but the reality is, it will not be fully safe for workers or patrons until we have a vaccine. Perhaps closer than we think if Britain’s trial is the breakthrough I’m praying for. Many great local places are now reopen for indoor dining, but we won’t be going there. Neither will many people following precautions. Even if we do go back, our favorite places in Boston won’t have the Sox or student crowds to sustain themselves.
So what to do? The President and his enablers in red statehouses decided two months ago to prematurely reopen the economy. They falsely choose the health of the economy over public health. The result has been a second wave far deadlier than the first in many states, to be inevitably followed by a second shutdown after the PPP and unemployment protection has dried up. It turns out you can’t wish the virus away.
Germany did not have this problem. It’s still just as capitalist as we are, if anything, as a net exporter of goods, it might even be a better capitalist than the US. Thanks to a thing called Kurzabeit, Merkel could actually close down the country and stop community spread. While we’re enduring a second wave of cases and deaths, Germany can safely begin to reopen now since it did not prematurely reopen two months ago. It can do so without closing businesses or laying anyone off thanks to this intricate system of time sharing, work sharing, profit sharing, and power sharing between the government, labor, and industry.
Notice that word I repeat. Sharing. It’s something our individualistic culture does not know how to do. Maybe since we still do not have a universal form of another German import: kindergarten. Germany is predicted to be the big economic winner from this crisis, precisely since they choose to invest in their people by choosing to share rather than choosing to hoard. They will reopen with both a stronger economy and more secure public health than the US. A false choice America should not and did not have to make.
Cantab. Man, that’s tough.
I don’t think we disagree, but I’m impatient with de-personalizing responsibility for this. It is Trump and the Cult of Trump, including DeSantis, Abbott, Ducey, et al; Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson, and the conservative Media-Industrial Complex. Actual people, not ideas, turned a difficult situation into a catastrophe.
For all its faults, it wasn’t “American capitalism” or any -ism. It was people — individuals with names — making contemptuous, ultimately self-spiting decisions: “To Own the Libs”.
People inside the surprisingly close-knit restaurant industry were saying that Cantab was on the market years ago. The Cantab is not a victim of the pandemic. It has been on life support for years (some would say decades).
I agree with you that this is about people, not ideas. There is, I think, a common error that many of these people are making. That error is to assume that Donald Trump and his thugs can be brought back under control once unleashed.
I think many or most of today’s elected GOP officials think that Donald Trump and the Trumpists are advancing traditional GOP dogma while distracting the media and the public with these guys see as media showboating. I think these officials are therefore content to sit quietly assuming that the damage and destruction can be stopped when and if it gets too “carried away”.
This is the mistake that the elected German government made about Hitler in the 1930s.
This cancer has to be stopped RIGHT NOW. I mean, for crying out loud — secret police have been disappearing people in Portland for weeks now, and the White House promises that Chicago (and other major cities) are next.
What does it take to get our attention?
I finally wrote my Representative a couple weeks ago suggesting she file articles of impeachment against the Attorney General and now I think the DHS Secretary should get the same treatment. Realistically there’s nothing but an election at this point to kick them out.
I applaud your participation, and seriously doubt whether such an action can possibly have any effect in the near future. We are past the point where the usual grind of government can do anything.
How many people in how many cities do the DHS storm troopers have to disappear and/or kill before people wake up?
I agree that the pandemic will accelerate business closures that were already slowly occurring, I still think we should have a plan in place to preserve businesses and payrolls during emergencies like this like the Germans do. We did not have a system in place like that under Obama, so we cannot just blame Trump and hope it goes away when he’s gone. We need to do better.
I thought I was clear about Trump and his many enablers, I also think there are a lot of systemic issues at play here that go beyond Trumps incompetence and indifference no matter how large those two factors loom. Only 50% of Americans are ready to be vaccinated which is higher than the number of people who approve of Trump’s handling of this crisis. It goes well beyond Trump as our own resident Covid skeptic, a Mass Democratic state committee member no less, demonstrates on a daily basis here.
Assuming that last line refers to me, for the record I’m happy to be first in line for a vaccine since that seems to be the only way some will be comfortable and we can finally get out of this mess. I am also happy to wait my turn on that point if supplies are limited at first to allow the more vulnerable to have first dibs. My party role plays no part in this BTW. I don’t check with my tribe before forming an opinion, though I remain surprised and disappointed that my party was not at least asking the questions about societal impacts and the processes by which such drastic decisions were made.
I’m sorry to say that on this issue, your and our party is doing the responsible thing and ignoring your abject denial of reality about the pandemic.
It is certainly true that sweeping lockdowns and closures in areas far away from the infection cost much and do little, and I’ve joined you in making those arguments. The answer to that is more data, not fewer lockdowns and closures. When there is no data, then locking down is the only responsible answer.
On this issue, your stance is strikingly similar to the anti-science arguments offered by Climate Change deniers and by anti-evolution religious groups. I am glad to see the Democratic Party rejecting those anti-science views — in stark contrast to the GOP. It is no accident that the GOP opposes the science of handling the COVID pandemic just as it rejects the science of climate change and basic biology and physics.
We should be making local and hyper-local decisions about how to protect ourselves from COVID-19. We should be doing massive surveillance and anti-body testing. That means a huge investment in federal data-tracking and data-sharing infrastructure. The federal government is currently moving in the opposite direction.
The current indications are that the antibodies created by any vaccine will be short-lived — 30-90 days. That means that COVID is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future as a more virulent partner of the flu. We will likely have an annual or even seasonal COVID vaccine just as we have an annual flu vaccine. Those COVID vaccines are likely to be about as effective as flu vaccines — 40-60% according to the CDC.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, and diseases do not go away if we hide data about their occurrences. The fact that people in Wisconsin generally don’t have to worry about hurricanes and that people in Maine generally don’t have to worry about tornadoes does not mean that we can or should ignore either.
When a COVID-19 outbreak is detected in the immediate vicinity of school district or town, it is callously irresponsible to do anything except close the schools and lock down the town. That approach absolutely requires having a disease surveillance network capable of detecting any outbreak that occurs.
Commentary that minimizes the impact of this disease when it happens is counterproductive.
I submit there is a fundamental distinction between the denial of science and what I am advocating. On climate change, for example, there is no legitimate debate that it is happening, but there IS room for debate on how to best address it. Likewise, I have never questioned that we have a powerful virus moving among us and have in fact used the same numbers everyone else sees to make my case. I have questioned how to address it.
You have said, repeatedly, things like:
and so on.
Your commentary has consistently minimized the impact, minimized the risks, and distorted both. You compared the risk of COVID to the likelihood of winning the lottery, for crying out loud. You compared closing schools, social distancing, and wearing masks to torture!
While you may not feel that you’re denying the science of this, your commentary shows otherwise.
The five stages of climate denial are:
Your commentary seems to be kicking in at about stage 3 or 4 in COVID denial.
I join most of us in empathizing with your distress and discomfort. I agree with some of your concerns and I make every effort to be outspoken about that.
I disagree with the policy recommendations you have been making in response to those feelings.
Let me be clear – of you’re numbered stages of denial above, I do NOT adhere to items 1, 3, and 4 relative to COVID (and certainly hope 5 isn’t true). I have said we have reacted too drastically relative to risk. I walked back the comparisons to lightening and the lottery, but it’s still small.
BTW, I of course am not saying that closings, distancing, and masks are themselves torture. I am saying that just because something works does not make it a good idea.
Do you have any evidence to back up your attack on your own party? Surely the other party has done a far worse job of asking these questions?
I see Democratic leaders, and admittedly some Republicans, following the science and making the best possible situations they can despite the lack of federal leadership or support. If anything, the two Democrats I do single out for criticism reacted too slowly and too cautiously to prevent the pandemic from hitting their state. That would be the Mayor and Governor of New York, respectively. Both of whom, particularly Cuomo, have done a much better job since their bungled start to managing this crisis. It is you, Mr. Trump, and Sun belt Republican governors who have instead pretended this virus isn’t real or value economic liberties over the health and well being of citizens and living beings.
If anyone were asking those questions they did a good job hiding it. With people I correspond with when I tried to ask questions I didn’t even get a validation that my concerns were real, but was beat over the head with PEOPLE WILL DIE! For reasons passing understanding it does seem to be left to the other party to publicly raise those concerns. I still want to see a study on why the script was flipped in this case.
Trump raised it; therefore one must be truly evil to even think about it. Or, at least to the extent that politicians are driven by the left’s “energy,” which in this circumstance is an angry mob on twitter.
It was pretty obvious by St. Patrick’s Day that a lockdown was something that could be sustained for a month or two, at most. It was never, in a realistic world, going to stop (only slow) transmission in the population, and it was pretty obvious from jump street that its effectiveness would decline over time, because it would be economically and politically hard to sustain.
I’m not sure how anyone, even now, thinks that a policy dependent on “If I could only forcibly compel 300 million people to agree with me completely” is going to be workable.
The narrative of this post seems not to understand that the federal government cant order shutdowns in any event. What it could have done is throw its weight into testing, early, but that ignores the fact that the test that the CDC was behind, early, was faulty.
If Obama were POTUS, he would have acted a lot sooner, and geared up federal support for testing, which, unfortunately, would not have been helpful because they had the wrong test. Then, he could suggest– only suggest– that states implement lockdowns, because he doesn’t have plenary police power. States would followed, or ignored, this advice in precisely the opposite way that they are presently ignoring, or not, Trump.
I suppose by, you know, being Obama, he would have struck a more reassuring tone, but I don’t think that this tone would have changed the same “everything is political culture war” dynamic that hamstrung him every day of his presidency.
The US is, by constitution, not well positioned to handle this kind of thing. I guess there should be some discussion about whether the federal executive should be empowered to exercise public health police powers in such circumstances, but, given that this would have meant that Massachusetts’ public health policy would have been under the direct control of Trump, I would be skeptical of such an approach.
The current administration is muzzling scientists, attempting to block the publication of data, doing all in its power to defund and block testing, and using the pandemic as an excuse to impose a military takeover of cities it deems politically hostile.
No other administration in history has ever done anything comparable. The Barack Obama administration would certainly not now be making these moves.
I categorically reject your apparent attempt to draw an equivalence between the two.
Barack Obama was not Donald Trump.
Your first two paragraphs are accurate, but the only comparison I see CMD making between the two Presidents is about things they can’t control. He expressly distinguished between their styles and capabilities.
Trump shouting at the wind doesn’t comfort me either. He doesn’t formulate coherent arguments well. He just likes to troll liberals. The right messenger is key. FDR walked Americans through how we would survive the Depression and famously said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I feel like we’ve seen a lot of fear itself lately about the pandemic.
There’s a difference between facing the fear and pretending the cause of their fear isn’t real. Trump, like Hoover before time, was just hoping that eventually this thing would blow over and the private sector could handle all the fallout. Obviously that is not the case.
I think Churchill’s approach of being honest about what’s gone wrong and optimistic about what the people acting as a collective can do to make it better is the better fit. We cannot sugarcoat the reality that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens have died because we didn’t do enough, but that does not mean we cannot do more to save more going forward.
Obama would have also invoked the DPA to make PPE, federalized the national guard to conduct testing and enforce quarantines if need be, lockdown Amtrak and ground domestic flights as Italy successfully did. There’s a lot of emergency powers the President already has he has chosen not to use. It’s easier for him to outsource responsibility to 50 governors, all of whom have responded differently to the crisis. So you are correct our federal system is partly to blame for our lack of a national response-but that’s why we have a President and no longer have the Articles of Confederation.
Also you and a Christopher continue to use the false framing between fighting the pandemic and preserving the economy. The whole point of my thread is that Germany did not have to make a choice between shutting down businesses and laying people off or shutting down to preserve people’s health. They were able to do both. Something for us to consider.
I thought Germany shut down pretty hard – no?
We’ve been to this rodeo before. The steps taken by Germany are at best comparable to those taken by individual states. We need to be extremely careful when we compare German and US approaches to COVID, so that we avoid falling into statistical (and political) ratholes.
The land area of Germany, at 137,988 square miles, is between that of New Mexico (at 121,590) and Montana (147,039). California, Texas, and Alaska are each larger.
The population of Germany, at 83.02 million, while larger than any individual state (the most populous US state is California at 39.5M), is still a fraction of the US population (319 million).
A better comparison is between Germany and the US Northeast (Maine, New York, New Jersey, Vermon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire). The population of the Northeast is about 56 M (vs Germany’s 83 M) and the land area of the Northeast is about 181,000 square miles (vs Germany’s 138,000 square miles).
Both Germany and the Northeast US locked down. Both had a spike in COVID earlier this year.
There are several marked differences between Germany and the US:
I agree with James that Germany is a model of how a first-world democracy can respond to this dangerous pandemic.
The specific actions taken by Germany almost certainly would have different outcomes here. Importantly, the German response was guided by essentially real-time data being provided by extensive testing. The US still has no remotely comparable ability.
The main reason why the US had to shut down its economy is the utter and complete incompetence of virtually every aspect of the federal government, compounded by explicit and intentional actions of Donald Trump and the GOP to damage or destroy every attempt to overcome our massive failures.
Donald Trump is, at this very moment, deploying unwanted federal forces to Chicago just as he earlier invaded Portland, OR. So far as I know, there has been absolutely ZERO effective effort to stop those illegal actions.
I don’t see how anybody can look at the current situation in America and avoid the conclusion that the American political and government system has collapsed.
The US does not, at the moment, have even the tiniest capability to emulate the German response to COVID-19.
We’ve already hit the iceberg. The question now is whether or not we have the ability stop the water pouring into the hull before the US ship of state follows the Titanic to a watery grave.
That’s all well and good and you won’t get argument from me that the federal response has left a lot to be desired. It sounded like jconway was suggesting that Germany did not shut down its economy whereas I thought I remembered that they instituted one of the strongest European shutdowns.
Germany shut down its country and economy more swiftly and consistently than we did. I’m arguing the actual economic fallout was minimized by their stronger system of social support to employers and employees alike.
Well yes, I definitely think this whole thing has shone a glaring and not very flattering light on the state of USA’s social safety net, especially when you account for demographic disparities. For me personally the economy has been at best a proxy argument particularly after the enhanced unemployment kicked in. Ultimately my real objection (and I’m sorry if you don’t think it’s valid, but I’m making it anyway) has always been the cancelation of my life and the forced hibernation in my tiny studio on account of risks that I still don’t think are high enough to justify it. Whenever I see people talking about other countries’ “successes” in handling the coronavirus the first question that runs through my head is what measures did they take that humanity should never be asked to tolerate?
It is REALLY important that you actually WATCH Angela Merkel in April of this year (during the German lockdown) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22SQVZ4CeXA
Here’s what she said (from the English subtitles of her German comments, emphasis mine):
Germany chose a smart and competent woman to lead their nation fifteen years ago, and have kept her in power since. She is widely admired across the German political spectrum and this short piece illustrates why.
America had that opportunity in 2016, and instead chose a dumb and incompetent man.
Thinking that the American response was anything like the German response is like thinking that the crude constructions of the cargo cults (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult) were anything like the aircraft they attempted to emulate.
It appears to me that attempting to manage the pandemic while the current US government is in place is like attempting to stop the incoming tide by standing on the shore and spitting in the wind.
What’s remarkable is that this crisis might actually extend her leadership since her popularity has shot through the roof. Competent government is still one of our best hopes at disarming white nationalism. AfD polling is at an all time low right now. Also having had de facto closed borders for up to 18 months might finally convince people that immigration is helpful to a nations prosperity and not a threat.
Last I checked she insists she is on her way out.
If you are suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s response would ultimately have mitigated the suffering and even the extreme disruptions I hope and assume you are correct.
I for one may not have objected as strongly to the shutdown on economic grounds if I thought we had been prepared to soften the economic blow first, but since I’m healthy and less personally concerned about a direct hit by the virus (not to mention desperately having to ameliorate cabin fever) I am venturing out and trying to do my part to strengthen this sector of the economy. Every establishment I have patronized has had reasonable protocols in place.