1. Here’s the conundrum I keep coming back to.
2. You need near-total public unity to maintain social distancing and prevent the virus' spread long enough to set up test/trace/quarantine as a bridge to a vaccine. Without it, enough people defect and stop doing it for the system to break down, and new outbreaks sprout.
3. You need near-total public unity to reopen the economy while the virus is still spreading. Without it, enough people defect and refuse to reenter the economy for the system to break down, and businesses fail.
4. It is hard to imagine successful social distancing continuing if Trump and Fox News don’t support it, since a large swath of the public listens to them. And it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-n…
5. It is hard to imagine successful economic reopening happening if public health officials don’t support it, since a large swath of the public listens to them. And it doesn’t look like that is going to happen (nor should it, they recognize that would kill many people).
6. But it is easy to imagine Trump and Fox pushing for economic reopening over the objections of public health officials, sending enough supporters crashing out of social distancing to spur outbreaks while failing to mobilize enough of the public to actually support companies.
7. If that happens, Trump and Fox will turn around and blame public health officials, Democrats, the media, and whoever else they say was insufficiently supportive of the brilliant “reopen the economy” plan. But the economy will still be devastated, and a lot of people dead.
8. I don’t have any answers here but this seems like a huge collective action problem.
9 The best I've got is the longer that process gets stalled, the more time states have to build up test/trace/quarantine capabilities.
