Some Bad News and Some Good News and Looking Ahead
At least 22 million Americans are newly unemployed, over 5 million Americans newly filed their UI cases in the last week, and this is an undercount since many still cannot get into their state’s UI systems to file their claims. Gig workers and the self employed are having a particularly hard time applying and becoming eligible because the systems are not set up to readily process their new eligibility.
The state of California reported 76 new coronavirus deaths yesterday, of which 42 are in LA County. However, the state and the county believe they have reached their peak of new infections, and they believe infection rates will be turning down, and some respected researchers have concluded we in California will be at zero new infections by the middle of May. Hospitalization rates should be turning down soon and death rates should decline later. The researchers really don’t know how rapidly these infection rates will decline, but they are extrapolating based on the experiences elsewhere. It will completely depend on how much and for how long we all decide to maintain social distancing.
In other states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Illinois, Montana and Wyoming the infection rates are still rising quite sharply. The devastating story of infections and deaths in Albany GA in today’s Los Angeles Times and the ongoing deaths in NYC are emblematic of the bullets we may have dodged in California for now.
The questions ahead are how do we reopen the economy consistent with good testing, good contact tracing, and isolation and quarantine for those infected. We still do not have the testing in place and widely available. We do not have contact tracing in place. And we absolutely don’t have any good quarantine available other than asking those infected to stay home and self isolate.
The Governors on the West Coast are planning to slowly reopen their regional economies given the relative effectiveness of their stay at home programs in stemming the tide of the pandemic. They are discussing staggered school and work schedules to allow for social distancing, and masked servers, disposable menus and wide separation in restaurant settings. The Mayor of Los Angeles believes gatherings at large sporting events will be impossible for the rest of this year. Let’s hope they do as good a job in re-opening and restarting as they have done in shutting down; however that will depend on all of us. Return to truly normal social interactions depends on developing a good vaccine and getting us all vaccinated.
Lucien Wulsin
4/16/20