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Either there won’t be enough jobs for the people eventually looking for work because so many businesses closed during the pandemic, or the jobs left over will be, frankly, lousier jobs. This latter possibility would leave a large share of Americans underemployed, which would cause a wide reduction in household income among the country’s less wealthy half.

Just imagine seeing millions of new jobs added over the next few months and unemployment falling, all accompanied by a decline in household spending by workers who are then only able to access the low-wage, low-hours jobs they had before the pandemic

The majority of the jobs that aren’t back to prepandemic work force levels are very low-income jobs; they are what the U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index, which I cocreated, calls low-quality jobs.

Through March of this year, most of the private sector jobs eliminated during the pandemic that haven’t been restored are production and “nonsupervisory” jobs that offered weekly pay averaging less than $750 prepandemic. There are more than 45 million low-paying jobs like these, constituting roughly 43 percent of all production and nonsupervisory jobs in the country. This is not about a mere, unfortunate corner of the jobs market.

here’s the rub: When you add normal state unemployment benefits and the federal supplements together, $750 per week from the government is a fairly typical benefit for an unemployed American.

23 million of these jobs paid under $500 per week prepandemic: That’s $26,000 per year. Not only are the wages low: Many of these jobs offer well below 30 hours of work per week.

And it is safe to assume that someone getting $750 per week for not working is not eagerly jumping up to go back to work for potentially hundreds of dollars a week less.

The chronic problem we face as we put Covid-19 in the rearview mirror is that the U.S. economy before the pandemic was incredibly dependent on an abundance of low-wage, low-hours jobs. It was a combo that yielded low prices for comfortably middle-class and wealthier customers and low labor costs for bosses, but spectacularly low incomes for tens of millions of others.

If, in this summer interim, the remaining federal benefits for those without jobs pressures some employers to increase wages and offer a more full-time hours to their employees, then that is all to the good for them and the sturdiness of our economy

Instead, why not absorb the lesson being taught?

It’s pretty simple and one that, normally, progressives fight to have heard: businesses are paying tens of millions of workers too little money relative to the cost of living in this country.

The corporate assets are in addition to another $7 trillion worth of government debt that the Fed said it will continue to purchase to keep the economic recovery humming.

"Portfolio sales will be gradual and orderly, and will aim to minimize the potential for any adverse impact on market functioning," the Fed said.

The Fed currently holds $13.7 billion worth of corporate assets, including more than $5 billion of corporate bonds and another $8.5 billion worth of exchange-traded funds.

The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday that it will begin winding down a program that purchased tens of billions of dollars of corporate assets to shore up the economy during the pandemic.

Overall, more than 136 million people -- about 41% of the US population -- are fully vaccinated, and about 51% have received at least one dose of vaccine, according to CDC data.

For the first time since March 2020, the US recorded a seven-day average of fewer than 20,000 new daily cases Tuesday. Less than 5% of the US population lives in a county considered to have high Covid-19 transmission, according to CDC data.

"You have parts of the country with very low vaccination rates," she said. "I really worry about the unvaccinated people in those areas spreading coronavirus to one another."

"Our study suggests that, for a population of 10.5 million, approximately 1.8 million infections and 8,000 deaths could be prevented during 11 months with more efficacious COVID-19 vaccines, higher vaccination coverage, and maintaining NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions), such as distancing and use of face masks," they wrote.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice on Tuesday announced a vaccination incentive lottery with prizes that include $1 million, two full four-year scholarships to eligible students and 25 weekend getaways.

In Kentucky, senior centers will be allowed to reopen at full capacity starting June 11, Gov. Andy Beshear said. "The reason that we can do that are vaccines. These things are miracles," he said in a statement.

Mehul Patel, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues used a mathematical model to simulate a coronavirus spread within the population of North Carolina.

They found that infections, hospitalizations and deaths would continue to rise if pandemic precautions such as quarantine, school closures, social distancing and mask-wearing were lifted while vaccines were being rolled out.

"On Father's Day, we are going to make one of you a millionaire," Justice said.

Fortunately, cases also do appear to be declining in children.

As of May 27, nearly 4 million children had tested positive since the pandemic's start.

the eurozone, which is made up of 19 economies including France and Germany, is enduring big price hikes as a result of the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and blockages in supply chains.

Across the eurozone, inflation is running at multiyear highs, including in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, where the annual rate has hit 6%.

Even that is below the 6.2% recorded at last count in the U.S., the biggest 12-month jump since 1990.

The eurozone’s core inflation rate, which strips out potentially volatile items such as alcohol, energy, food and tobacco, also spiked higher in November to an annual rate of 2.6% from 2%.

higher wages, for example.

However, the recently discovered omicron variant of the coronavirus has prompted some uncertainty over the global economic outlook, and as a result, central banks around the world are expected to hold back from announcing any big policy changes soon.

Many economists think the inflation spike over recent months will reverse next year as base effects linked with the sharp fall in prices during the pandemic last year, primarily of energy, are stripped out from annual comparisons.

Records started being compiled about the euro two years before its actual launch in 1999. For the first three years of its existence, it was an invisible currency that was traded on foreign exchange markets and used for accounting purposes and electronic payments. In 2002, euro notes and coins first came into circulation, replacing historic currencies such as the French franc, the German deutschmark and the Italian lira.

As for our continuing distress, the standard explanation is a uniquely American loneliness. The surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, declared it an epidemic in its own right.

The truth, however, is there’s no good evidence that Americans are lonelier than ever

a major recent poll shows that older Americans are now significantly less lonely than they were three years ago; a recent peer-reviewed study reports that middle-aged Americans describe themselves as less lonely than they were 20 years ag

Loneliness is more pervasive among younger Americans, but there too, the rates have also plummeted since 2020

Logically, we should be feeling better. Why can’t we shake this thing?

loneliness was never the core problem. It was, rather, the sense among so many different people that they’d been left to navigate the crisis on their own. How do you balance all the competing demands of health, money, sanity?

The answer was always the same: Figure it out.

while other countries built trust and solidarity, America — both during and after 2020 — left millions to fend for themselves.

For millions of Americans, distrust feels like the most rational state.

The very different people I spoke with that year all had one thing in common: a feeling that in the wake of Covid, all the larger institutions they had been taught to trust had failed them. At the most precarious times in their lives, they found there was no system in place to help.

four years later, the situation is, if anything, worse.

Nursing homes across the country, where poor labor conditions were linked to higher Covid mortality levels, remain understaffed, leaving old, frail residents more vulnerable than they should be. Hunger and food insecurity remain wrenching emergencies.

Students haven’t fully returned to school. Congress passed the Child Poverty Reduction Act of 2021, one of the most effective antipoverty measures in decades. Then a year later, Congress ended it, pushing some five million young people back down into extreme financial need.

When everything was uncertain and everyone’s future was on the line, we walked right up to the precipice of a moral breakthrough, and then we turned back.

Look at the way we all accustomed ourselves to the term “essential worker,” an ostensible term of respect that instead condemned people to work in manifestly dangerous conditions. The adoption of that term made visible something we now cannot unsee: In the United States the people we rely on most to keep our world functioning are the people we treated as disposable.

we might call the bigger problem structural isolation: abandoned by employers, deprived of shared purpose, denied care. The combined effect sent a strong message that individual lives weren’t worth as much anymore.

People treated one another accordingly. We all remember the viral videos of people screaming at one another in supermarkets and on public transportation. Violent crime spiked. Even reckless driving surged — but it happened only in the United States.

The reasons for that American exceptionalism become only more urgent in an election year, when, as in a public health crisis, presidents can try to bring people together or try to turn them against one another.

The pandemic and its restrictions have limited the availability of dockworkers and truck drivers, causing delays in handling cargo from Southern California to Singapore

Economies around the globe are absorbing the ripple effects of the disruption on the seas. Higher costs for transporting American grain and soybeans across the Pacific threaten to increase food prices in Asia.

Empty containers are piled up at ports in Australia and New Zealand; containers are scarce at India’s port of Kolkata, forcing makers of electronics parts to truck their wares more than 1,000 miles west to the port of Mumbai, where the supply is better.

Rice exporters in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia are forgoing some shipments to North America because of the impossibility of securing containers.

Since they were first deployed in 1956, containers have revolutionized trade by allowing goods to be packed into standard size receptacles and hoisted by cranes onto rail cars and trucks — effectively shrinking the globe.

Unlike the financial crisis, when the economic recovery took years to gather force, Chinese factories came roaring back in the second half of 2020, yielding robust demand for shipping.

Viewed broadly, the volume of global trade dipped by only 1 percent in 2020 compared with the previous year. But that doesn’t reflect how the year unfolded — with a plunge of more than 12 percent in April and May, followed by an equally dramatic reversal. The system could not adjust, leaving containers in the wrong places, and pushing shipping prices to extraordinary heights.

Six months ago, he was paying about $2,500 to ship a 40-foot container to California.“We just paid $67,000,” he said. “This is the highest freight rate that I have seen in 45 years in the business.”

Given the prices fetched by containers in Asia, shipping carriers are increasingly unloading in California and then immediately putting empty boxes back on ships for the return leg to Asia, without waiting to load grain or other American exports. That has left companies like Scoular scrambling to secure passage.

"A big jump in interest rates would be very costly," said Ugo Panizza, professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. "Central banks will face very, very complicated tradeoffs if inflation does go up."

The moves have been triggered in part by growing confidence about the next phase of the pandemic. As vaccination campaigns allow governments to lift some restrictions, consumers are expected to rush to restaurants and hop on planes. That could push up prices, which central banks have pledged to keep under control.

US lawmakers approved a mammoth $1.9 trillion stimulus package on Wednesday that could send prices higher and increase pressure on the Federal Reserve.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that publicly-held government debt in the United States will climb to nearly $22.5 trillion by the end of fiscal 2021. That's equivalent to 102% of annual gross domestic product. In Italy, the ratio stood at 154% at the end of September, while Greece was almost at 200%.

Interest costs are even more sensitive to inflation and rate hikes because of the pandemic response.The UK government borrowed £270.6 billion ($377 billion) between April 2020 and January 2021, and higher interest rates mean increased payments on that debt.

"Just as it would be irresponsible to withdraw [economic] support too soon, it would also be irresponsible to allow future borrowing and debt to be left unchecked," he said.

"It is a real concern," said Randall Kroszner, who served as a Federal Reserve governor from 2006 until 2009. If US debt payments suddenly go "from being quite low to being quite significant," that could weigh on the recovery and slow economic activity, he added.

Panizza said that Italy needs to refinance or extend the due date of about one-seventh of its debt every year. If interest rates were to go up by 2%, that would add about half a point of GDP, or roughly $9.9 billion, to debt servicing costs annually. That's a "substantial" amount, he emphasized.

"This is not something that we have a lot of experience with," Kroszner said.

It was only in July, when case counts began soaring in a trio of populous, Republican-leaning states — Arizona, Florida and Texas — and polls showed a majority of Americans disapproving of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, that the president and his top aides renewed their public activity related to the virus.

Trump and many of his top aides talk about the virus not as a contagion that must be controlled through social behavior but rather as a plague that eventually will dissipate on its own. Aides view the coronavirus task force — which includes Fauci, Birx and relevant agency heads — as a burden that has to be managed, officials said.

. An internal model by Trump’s Council on Economic Advisers predicts a looming disaster, with the number of infections projected to rise later in August and into September and October in the Midwest and elsewhere, according to people briefed on the data.

As the nation confronts a once­in-a-century health crisis that has killed at least 158,000 people, infected nearly 5 million and devastated the economy, the atmosphere in the White House is as chaotic as at any other time in Trump’s presidency — “an unmitigated disaster,” in the words of a second former senior administration official.

“It’s extraordinary that a country that helped eradicate smallpox, promoted HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide and suppressed Ebola — we were the world’s leader in public health and medicine, and now we can’t even protect our own people from the most devastating epidemic in decades.”

Asked who was to blame for the pandemic’s dark summer turn, Pelosi said, “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”“The delay, the denial . . . the hoax that it’s going to go away magically, a miracle is going to happen, we’ll be in church together by Easter, caused death,” Pelosi added.

In Trump’s White House, there is little process that guides decision-making on the pandemic. The president has been focused first and foremost on his reelection chances and reacting to the daily or hourly news cycle as opposed to making long-term strategy, with Meadows and other senior aides indulging his impulses rather than striving to impose discipline.

“He sits in the Oval Office and says, ‘Do this,’ or, ‘Do that,’ and there was always a domino blocker. It was John Bolton or H.R. McMaster on national security or John Kelly. Now there are no domino blockers.”

What’s more, with polls showing Trump’s popularity on the decline and widespread disapproval of his management of the viral outbreak, staffers have concocted a positive feedback loop for the boss. They present him with fawning media commentary and craft charts with statistics that back up the president’s claim that the administration has done a great — even historically excellent — job fighting the virus.

“Everyone is busy trying to create a Potemkin village for him every day. You’re not supposed to see this behavior in liberal democracies that are founded on principles of rule of law. Everyone bends over backwards to create this Potemkin village for him and for his inner circle.”

Although Fauci, Birx and other medical professionals sit on the coronavirus task force, many of the more pressing decisions lately have been made by the smaller group that huddles in the morning and mostly prioritizes politics. The cadre includes Meadows, senior adviser Jared Kushner and strategic communications director Alyssa Farah.

The policy process has fallen apart around Meadows, according to four White House officials, with the chief of staff fixated on preventing leaks and therefore unwilling to expand meetings to include experts or to share documents with senior staffers who had been excluded from discussions.

Luciana Borio, a director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council during the first two years of the Trump administration, decried “a response in disarray hampered by a lack of clear, consistent public health-oriented guidance to the public.

“It’s very difficult to know who to trust,” Borio said. “To expect the public to sort out the facts in a time of tremendous stress leads to inconsistent and disparate actions, and that really hurts our collective effort to fight the virus.”

What also has frustrated a number of the president’s allies and former aides is that he simply seems uninterested in asserting full leadership over the crisis, instead deferring to state leaders to make the more difficult decisions while using his presidential bully pulpit to critique their performances.

“A suppression-level effort to shrink and not just mitigate the spread of covid requires a national strategy that includes standards and significant federal funding. Such a strategy is lacking right now.”

The Trump administration has resisted devising a national testing program and instead ceded the task to state governments, even as cases of infection average more than 60,000 a day and some people wait 10 days or longer for test results, delays that render the results essentially useless.

While some states have been able to largely meet the needs of their populations, the federal government is the only entity with the power to coordinate testing across state lines, push and enable manufacturers to increase production of test kits and supplies, surge those supplies as needed and ensure fair payment.

Without federal coordination, states, businesses, hospitals — and soon schools and universities — find themselves competing with each other for limited supplies, often overpaying as a result.

Despite repeated calls to invoke the Defense Production Act to help resolve testing-supply shortages, the administration has resisted doing so. Trump and several White House aides have instead continued to think that it is politically advantageous to cede the issue to the states to avoid taking ownership or blame for the issue, even though testing shortages are largely seen as a federal failure.

“Other countries have taken this virus seriously, trusted their public health officials and scientists, and now they’ve flattened the curve,” he said. “Meanwhile, our situation gets worse and worse every day and some Americans think, ‘Oh, that’s just the way it is.’ But that isn’t how it has to be.

He’s just not oriented towards things that even in the short term look like they’re involving something that’s hard or negative or that involves sacrifice or pain,” a former senior administration official explained. “He is always anxious to get to a place of touting achievements and being the messenger for good news.”

Recessions typically fall hardest on racial and ethnic minorities

During economic expansions, job gains typically flow last to those groups, which means less seniority when downturns arrive

More jobs have been lost in service industries and occupations where women are disproportionately represented, while women have also shouldered more responsibility for the challenges to family health, school closures and other disruptions from the pandemic.

a departure from the labor force altogether that can recast demographics of who works and earns, who can buy a home, invest, or help children pay for college.

Younger women in the first stages of career and family formation had made some of the strongest recent gains in labor force participation, and now have seen the sharpest drop.

The blow has fallen hardest on women of color.

That question will determine the quality and breadth of the U.S. recovery, and whether this recession exacerbates wealth and income inequality

at some point the loss of millions of wage earners will be felt, and full recovery will be elusive until either their former employers recover, or those workers gravitate to new firms and occupations.

If passed, the amendment would give Florida the highest minimum wage among Southern states and impact an estimated 2.5 million workers. 

There are seven other states already on track to hit $15 in the coming years, but those tend to be blue states with liberal labor policies.

Some proponents also say passage of Amendment 2 could help the push for a $15 wage floor at the federal level, especially if Democrats win the White House and control of the Senate.

“If $15 passes in Florida, it will send a clear message to the incoming [Biden] administration that raising the minimum wage is not just good policy but also good politics.”

But despite the general popularity of minimum wage hikes ― most have sailed through on the ballot in recent years ― the Florida proposal is by no means a sure thing.

“I think we feel good, but we need to turn out every single voter in the state,” said Stephanie Porta, the executive director of Organize Florida, a progressive group that supports the referendum.

Florida voters last approved a minimum wage increase in 2004, when they voted to raise it to $6.15 per hour. The current minimum wage is $8.56 thanks to inflation adjustments included in the 2004 referendum, but progressive advocates say that still falls far short of a living wage,

A single adult with no children would need to make more than $12 an hour to earn a living wage in Florida, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The increase to $15 would boost pay for about a quarter of the state’s workforce, according to the Florida Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.

A third of Florida’s female workers would see a raise; 38% of women of color in the workforce would receive a pay increase, the institute says. 

Florida has a $3.02-per-hour “tip credit” for business owners. It’s what allows Johnson to pay a server $5.54 before gratuities, rather than $8.56, under the current minimum wage. That $3.02 credit would stay under the new law, but it would have less impact over time.

“Any restaurant that’s on the bubble right now, especially with COVID ― when they have those additional costs, I don’t know if they make it through,”

Much of the financial backing for the amendment has come from the law firm of John Morgan, a high-profile Florida attorney who represents workers in class-action lawsuits.

a 2005 study that found “no empirical evidence” that Florida’s last, more modest minimum wage increase caused employers to lay off workers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has limited in-person organizing efforts, especially in the lower-income communities that would benefit most from the wage increase, and progressive groups and the Florida Democratic Party fell short of their voter registration targets.

We need to turn out every single voter in the state. Stephanie Porta, executive director of Organize Florida

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has endorsed raising the federal minimum wage to $15, and Democrats and progressives in Florida hope that support for Amendment 2 could boost his chances of defeating President Donald Trump in the crucial swing state.

In 2018, Florida voters said yes on a referendum to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions, a major progressive priority, even as Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott won narrow victories in the state’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, respectively. 

“I’m sure the legislature will try to screw with it,” Porta said. “They always try to go against the people ― that is their M.O. But we will be ready to fight.”

On Tuesday, the White House proposed its own $916 billion plan, which would include more than $400 billion for small businesses.

Many small businesses say they can’t wait that long. A survey from the National Federation of Independent Business on Tuesday showed optimism falling and uncertainty rising as the nationwide surge in coronavirus cases leads governments to reimpose restrictions and consumers to pare their spending.

If that happens, it could be a disaster for both state economies and state budgets. Local businesses are major sources of tax revenue — both directly and through their employees — and major drivers of economic activity. If they fail in large numbers, it will slow the economic recovery once the pandemic is over.

“Even though we didn’t have to shut down like the restaurants and bars and the travel industries, it didn’t matter,” he said. “The business wasn’t there.”

In recent weeks, his company, Modular Systems Technicians, received a $10,000 grant from a new state fund to help small businesses. He also got money under a program that refunded $8 billion from the state workers’ compensation fund.“It helped,” Mr. Meurer he said. “It’s not nearly enough, but they did what they could.”

As part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act last spring, Congress created a $150 billion fund that states could tap in responding to the virus. They were given wide latitude in using the money — as long as they did so before the end of the year.

“If we don’t help them get through this, will it ever come back?” Mr. Polis asked. “Sure, but it means years of boarded-up stores and restaurants on Main Streets across America if Democrats and Republicans can’t come together now to act.”

Some states are trying creative ways to stretch resources. California last month established a “rebuilding fund,” which will use a comparatively small amount of public money to provide loan guarantees to encourage for-profit and nonprofit lenders to make low-interest loans to small businesses.

Ms. Tyson said the loans should help businesses make investments to adapt to life during the pandemic

“I’m not concerned about how hard I can work, how I can connect with my customers or my community,” Ms. Stein said. “I am concerned that I will eventually run out of money.”

They worried that a vaccine would initially elude scientists, that weary citizens would abandon restrictions despite the risks, that the virus would be with us from now on.

Most experts believed that once the crisis was over, the nation and its economy would revive quickly. But there would be no escaping a period of intense pain.

Exactly how the pandemic will end depends in part on medical advances still to come. It will also depend on how individual Americans behave in the interim. If we scrupulously protect ourselves and our loved ones, more of us will live. If we underestimate the virus, it will find us.

More Americans may die than the White House admits.

The epidemiological model often cited by the White House, which was produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, originally predicted 100,000 to 240,000 deaths by midsummer. Now that figure is 60,000.

The institute’s projection runs through Aug. 4, describing only the first wave of this epidemic. Without a vaccine, the virus is expected to circulate for years, and the death tally will rise over time.

Fatality rates depend heavily on how overwhelmed hospitals get and what percentage of cases are tested. China’s estimated death rate was 17 percent in the first week of January, when Wuhan was in chaos, according to a Center for Evidence-Based Medicine report, but only 0.7 percent by late February.

Various experts consulted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March predicted that the virus eventually could reach 48 percent to 65 percent of all Americans, with a fatality rate just under 1 percent, and would kill up to 1.7 million of them if nothing were done to stop the spread.

A model by researchers at Imperial College London cited by the president on March 30 predicted 2.2 million deaths in the United States by September under the same circumstances.

China has officially reported about 83,000 cases and 4,632 deaths, which is a fatality rate of over 5 percent. The Trump administration has questioned the figures but has not produced more accurate ones.

The tighter the restrictions, experts say, the fewer the deaths and the longer the periods between lockdowns. Most models assume states will eventually do widespread temperature checks, rapid testing and contact tracing, as is routine in Asia.

In this country, hospitals in several cities, including New York, came to the brink of chaos.

Only when tens of thousands of antibody tests are done will we know how many silent carriers there may be in the United States. The C.D.C. has suggested it might be 25 percent of those who test positive. Researchers in Iceland said it might be double that.

China is also revising its own estimates. In February, a major study concluded that only 1 percent of cases in Wuhan were asymptomatic. New research says perhaps 60 percent were.

The virus may also be mutating to cause fewer symptoms. In the movies, viruses become more deadly. In reality, they usually become less so, because asymptomatic strains reach more hosts. Even the 1918 Spanish flu virus eventually faded into the seasonal H1N1 flu.

The lockdowns will end, but haltingly.

it is likely a safe bet that at least 300 million of us are still vulnerable.

Until a vaccine or another protective measure emerges, there is no scenario, epidemiologists agreed, in which it is safe for that many people to suddenly come out of hiding. If Americans pour back out in force, all will appear quiet for perhaps three weeks.

The gains to date were achieved only by shutting down the country, a situation that cannot continue indefinitely. The White House’s “phased” plan for reopening will surely raise the death toll no matter how carefully it is executed.

Every epidemiological model envisions something like the dance

On the models, the curves of rising and falling deaths resemble a row of shark teeth.

Surges are inevitable, the models predict, even when stadiums, churches, theaters, bars and restaurants remain closed, all travelers from abroad are quarantined for 14 days, and domestic travel is tightly restricted to prevent high-intensity areas from reinfecting low-intensity ones.

In his wildly popular March 19 article in Medium, “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance,” Tomas Pueyo correctly predicted the national lockdown, which he called the hammer, and said it would lead to a new phase, which he called the dance, in which essential parts of the economy could reopen, including some schools and some factories with skeleton crews.

Even the “Opening Up America Again” guidelines Mr. Trump issued on Thursday have three levels of social distancing, and recommend that vulnerable Americans stay hidden. The plan endorses testing, isolation and contact tracing — but does not specify how these measures will be paid for, or how long it will take to put them in place.

On Friday, none of that stopped the president from contradicting his own message by sending out tweets encouraging protesters in Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia to fight their states’ shutdowns.

China did not allow Wuhan, Nanjing or other cities to reopen until intensive surveillance found zero new cases for 14 straight days, the virus’s incubation period.

Compared with China or Italy, the United States is still a playground.Americans can take domestic flights, drive where they want, and roam streets and parks. Despite restrictions, everyone seems to know someone discreetly arranging play dates for children, holding backyard barbecues or meeting people on dating apps.

Even with rigorous measures, Asian countries have had trouble keeping the virus under control

But if too many people get infected at once, new lockdowns will become inevitable. To avoid that, widespread testing will be imperative.

Reopening requires declining cases for 14 days, the tracing of 90 percent of contacts, an end to health care worker infections, recuperation places for mild cases and many other hard-to-reach goals.

Immunity will become a societal advantage.

Imagine an America divided into two classes: those who have recovered from infection with the coronavirus and presumably have some immunity to it; and those who are still vulnerable.

“It will be a frightening schism,” Dr. David Nabarro, a World Health Organization special envoy on Covid-19, predicted. “Those with antibodies will be able to travel and work, and the rest will be discriminated against.”

Soon the government will have to invent a way to certify who is truly immune. A test for IgG antibodies, which are produced once immunity is established, would make sense

Dr. Fauci has said the White House was discussing certificates like those proposed in Germany. China uses cellphone QR codes linked to the owner’s personal details so others cannot borrow them.

As Americans stuck in lockdown see their immune neighbors resuming their lives and perhaps even taking the jobs they lost, it is not hard to imagine the enormous temptation to join them through self-infection

My daughter, who is a Harvard economist, keeps telling me her age group needs to have Covid-19 parties to develop immunity and keep the economy going,”

It would be a gamble for American youth, too. The obese and immunocompromised are clearly at risk, but even slim, healthy young Americans have died of Covid-19.

The virus can be kept in check, but only with expanded resources.

Resolve to Save Lives, a public health advocacy group run by Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the former director of the C.D.C., has published detailed and strict criteria for when the economy can reopen and when it must be closed.

once a national baseline of hundreds of thousands of daily tests is established across the nation, any viral spread can be spotted when the percentage of positive results rises.

To keep the virus in check, several experts insisted, the country also must start isolating all the ill — including mild cases.

“If I was forced to select only one intervention, it would be the rapid isolation of all cases,”

In China, anyone testing positive, no matter how mild their symptoms, was required to immediately enter an infirmary-style hospital — often set up in a gymnasium or community center outfitted with oxygen tanks and CT scanners.

There, they recuperated under the eyes of nurses. That reduced the risk to families, and being with other victims relieved some patients’ fears.

Still, experts were divided on the idea of such wards

Ultimately, suppressing a virus requires testing all the contacts of every known case. But the United States is far short of that goal.

In China’s Sichuan Province, for example, each known case had an average of 45 contacts.

The C.D.C. has about 600 contact tracers and, until recently, state and local health departments employed about 1,600, mostly for tracing syphilis and tuberculosis cases.

China hired and trained 9,000 in Wuhan alone. Dr. Frieden recently estimated that the United States will need at least 300,000.

There will not be a vaccine soon.

any effort to make a vaccine will take at least a year to 18 months.

the record is four years, for the mumps vaccine.

for unclear reasons, some previous vaccine candidates against coronaviruses like SARS have triggered “antibody-dependent enhancement,” which makes recipients more susceptible to infection, rather than less. In the past, vaccines against H.I.V. and dengue have unexpectedly done the same.

A new vaccine is usually first tested in fewer than 100 young, healthy volunteers. If it appears safe and produces antibodies, thousands more volunteers — in this case, probably front-line workers at the highest risk — will get either it or a placebo in what is called a Phase 3 trial.

It is possible to speed up that process with “challenge trials.” Scientists vaccinate small numbers of volunteers, wait until they develop antibodies, and then “challenge” them with a deliberate infection to see if the vaccine protects them.

Normally, it is ethically unthinkable to challenge subjects with a disease with no cure, such as Covid-19.

“Fewer get harmed if you do a challenge trial in a few people than if you do a Phase 3 trial in thousands,” said Dr. Lipsitch, who recently published a paper advocating challenge trials in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Almost immediately, he said, he heard from volunteers.

The hidden danger of challenge trials, vaccinologists explained, is that they recruit too few volunteers to show whether a vaccine creates enhancement, since it may be a rare but dangerous problem.

if a vaccine is invented, the United States could need 300 million doses — or 600 million if two shots are required. And just as many syringes.

“People have to start thinking big,” Dr. Douglas said. “With that volume, you’ve got to start cranking it out pretty soon.”

Treatments are likely to arrive first.

The modern alternative is monoclonal antibodies. These treatment regimens, which recently came very close to conquering the Ebola epidemic in eastern Congo, are the most likely short-term game changer, experts said.

as with vaccines, growing and purifying monoclonal antibodies takes time. In theory, with enough production, they could be used not just to save lives but to protect front-line workers.

Having a daily preventive pill would be an even better solution, because pills can be synthesized in factories far faster than vaccines or antibodies can be grown and purified.

Goodbye, ‘America First.’

A public health crisis of this magnitude requires international cooperation on a scale not seen in decades. Yet Mr. Trump is moving to defund the W.H.O., the only organization capable of coordinating such a response.

And he spent most of this year antagonizing China, which now has the world’s most powerful functioning economy and may become the dominant supplier of drugs and vaccines. China has used the pandemic to extend its global influence, and says it has sent medical gear and equipment to nearly 120 countries.

This is not a world in which “America First” is a viable strategy, several experts noted.

“If President Trump cares about stepping up the public health efforts here, he should look for avenues to collaborate with China and stop the insults,”

If we alienate the Chinese with our rhetoric, I think it will come back to bite us,” he said.“What if they come up with the first vaccine? They have a choice about who they sell it to. Are we top of the list? Why would we be?”

Once the pandemic has passed, the national recovery may be swift. The economy rebounded after both world wars, Dr. Mulder noted.

In one of the most provocative analyses in his follow-up article, “Coronavirus: Out of Many, One,” Mr. Pueyo analyzed Medicare and census data on age and obesity in states that recently resisted shutdowns and counties that voted Republican in 2016.

He calculated that those voters could be 30 percent more likely to die of the virus.

In the periods after both wars, Dr. Mulder noted, society and incomes became more equal. Funds created for veterans’ and widows’ pensions led to social safety nets, measures like the G.I. Bill and V.A. home loans were adopted, unions grew stronger, and tax benefits for the wealthy withered.

If a vaccine saves lives, many Americans may become less suspicious of conventional medicine and more accepting of science in general — including climate change

In addition, there were 242,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program covering freelancers, part-timers and others who do not routinely qualify for state benefits, a decrease of 43,000.

Although the pace of vaccinations, as well as passage of a $1.9 trillion relief package this month, has lifted economists’ expectations for growth, the labor market has lagged behind other measures of recovery.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton, said she hoped for consistent employment gains but her optimism was tempered by concern about the longer-term displacement of workers by the pandemic.

“The numbers are encouraging, but no one is jumping the gun and hiring up for what looks to be a boom this spring and summer,” she said. “There is a reluctance to get ahead of activity.”

Individuals earning less than $75,000 will receive the full $1,400. Married couples earning less than $150,000 a year will receive $2,800 -- and families with children are eligible for an additional $1,400 per dependent. Heads of households earning less than $112,500 a year will also receive the full $1,400 plus another $1,400 per dependent.

The jobless will receive a $300 weekly federal boost to unemployment benefits and get those payments through September 6.

The bill also calls for making the first $10,200 of unemployment payments tax-free for households with annual incomes under $150,000.

Food stamp recipients will see a 15% increase in benefits continue through September, instead of having it expire at the end of June.

Enrollees will pay no more than 8.5% of their income towards coverage, down from nearly 10% now. Also, those earning more than the current cap of 400% of the federal poverty level -- about $51,000 for an individual and $104,800 for a family of four in 2021 -- will become eligible for help.

It authorizes about $10 billion to help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages, utilities and property taxes.The bill also provides $5 billion to help states and localities assist those at risk of experiencing homelessness by providing safe, socially distant housing, for example. Another $5 billion goes to emergency housing vouchers for those who are homeless.

Qualifying families can receive a child tax credit of $3,600 for each child under 6 and $3,000 for each one under age 18, up from the current credit of up to $2,000 per child under age 17.The enhanced portion of the credit will be available for single parents with annual incomes up to $75,000 and joint filers making up to $150,000 a year.

The bill will send roughly $20 billion to state and local governments to help low-income households cover back rent, rent assistance and utility bills.

The bill provides $15 billion to the Emergency Injury Disaster Loan program, which provides long-term, low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration. Severely impacted small businesses with fewer than 10 workers will be given priority for some of the money.

It also provides $25 billion for a new grant program specifically for bars and restaurants. Eligible businesses may receive up to $10 million and can use the money for a variety of expenses, including payroll, mortgage and rent, utilities and food and beverages.

Workers being paid at or just above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour will not see a boost in pay.

The $1.9 trillion coronavirus package contains a wide range of benefits to help Americans who are still struggling with the economic fallout of the pandemic.

This week, officials will detail which specific countries are getting vaccines while cautioning that this is expected to be a lengthy, complicated process, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

"We want to lead the world with our values, with this demonstration of our innovation and ingenuity, and the fundamental decency of the American people," he added.

Administration officials are expected to lay out the criteria they've agreed on to determine which countries get doses. It remains to be seen whether the US will unilaterally decide which countries get which vaccines, or whether the international vaccine initiative known as COVAX will play a major role in deciding who gets them. It could also be a combination of both, officials say.

"We need to help fight the disease around the world to keep us safe here at home and to do the right thing helping other people. It's the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do, it's the strong thing to do," Biden said last month in remarks delivered at the White House.

Biden said in May the US would send 60 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses to other countries by July Fourth. But, as of Wednesday evening, those doses had not cleared a federal safety and efficacy review conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration, another official said.

"Just as in World War II, America was the arsenal of democracy, in the battle against Covid-19 pandemic, our nation is going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world," Biden said last month, adding, "just as democracies led the world in the darkness of World War II, democracies will lead the world out of this pandemic."

President Joe Biden has finalized his plan to distribute millions of coronavirus vaccines worldwide after months of deliberation, according to multiple sources familiar with the plans.

“With the pandemic raging, people are losing work and losing hope,” he said.

At the same time, economists said the concentrated nature of the December job losses suggested that the damage from the latest wave of coronavirus cases had not spread to the rest of the economy.

Most forecasters expect the economy to remain weak and perhaps shed more jobs in early 2021. But they are becoming increasingly optimistic about the rest of the year.

“There are a lot of rich people who’ve saved a lot of money and really want to spend it,” said Tara Sinclair, an economist at George Washington University.

Retailers, which laid off millions of workers last spring, added more than 120,000 jobs last month, a sign that they have learned to adapt to the pandemic.

Robert Branca, who owns two dozen Dunkin’ locations in Massachusetts, said that business picked up steadily over the summer but that it had tailed off since then.

Federal aid may also be crucial in another hard-hit category: the public sector.

Nearly four million Americans have been unemployed for more than six months, the standard threshold for long-term unemployment.

If that pattern repeats, it could have long-term consequences, particularly for people with disabilities, criminal records or other characteristics that make it hard to find jobs even in the best of times.

This needs to be addressed or else future generations of Americans will still be paying the price in decades to come.

Debt isn't always bad, however. There are times when it is useful, and now is one of those times. We need money to fight the pandemic, help the millions of people whose lives have been damaged, support businesses and prop up the economy until things get back to normal. We aren't out of the woods yet, even with the recent positive vaccine news, and we need to borrow more.

Here then is what the Biden administration should do. First, focus on getting the pandemic under control, helping those in need and supporting the economy.

These could include sensible cost control measures, such as increasing the retirement age and encouraging those who want to continue to work part time into retirement to do so.

Even at today's rock-bottom interest rates, we could quadruple federal education spending or send every family an annual check of $2,200 with the money we are spending on interest.

Once the economy is strong enough, as indicated by growth and employment (rather than political whims), the administration and Congress should gradually implement sensible measures to get control of the debt. This could include repealing some or all of the irresponsible tax cuts of the past years, reducing health care costs throughout the economy, cutting some of the near $1.4 trillion of tax breaks in the code and restoring sensible spending caps.

We also need to address our major trust fund programs that are facing insolvency in the upcoming years, including Social Security and Medicare.

Just because more debt is necessary right now doesn't mean it is harmless. We entered the last recession with debt as a share of GDP at 35%. This one is at 80% and we will leave it at well over 100%. US debt is growing faster than the economy and will break the all-time record set just after World War II as soon as 2023.

To Biden's credit, his campaign plan included trillions of dollars in revenue raisers and spending reforms, creating opportunities for lawmakers to fund new public investments in a fiscally responsible manner. It is a start, but there will be much more to do. Debt naysayers will want the new administration to opt for the free lunch approach -- borrowing rather than paying for new priorities -- but that is a dangerous economic plan in the long run that invites serious risk and leaves us vulnerable at a time we should be pursing an agenda of economic strength.

According to the most recently available national data, approximately 35% of children under 6 were in non-parental childcare at least 30 hours a week.

But we need to think of this as a stimulus bill, not as a tax burden.

Childcare workers are currently among the poorest-paid workers in the country, earning a median income of $11.65 an hour.

These naysayers seem to forget that a lot of the federal and state money spent on childcare will go back into the economy.

National childcare should be viewed like many of the programs in the New Deal Era of the 1930s, which were used to help pump up a struggling economy.

From its earliest days, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed how necessary early care and education are to making America work. Rather than viewing childcare as an unsupportable tax burden, investing in high-quality childcare should be seen as an essential public policy and a necessary part of stimulating our struggling economy.

the 10 countries with the highest deaths per capita were all in Latin America or the Caribbean.

deep-seated skepticism among people like Mr. Arriaga — the workers who feed Mexico City and much of the nation — turned to shock, and eventually to resignation, as their neighbors, friends and loved ones died and their neighborhood became ground zero for the outbreak.

Officials had posted signs warning of Covid-19 and urging workers to report illnesses. In the beginning, most ignored them.“I think they made it up, to raise prices on the poor,” Mr. Arriaga said of the virus in March

A new reality set in for many: A prolonged economic shutdown was clearly impossible. People could wear masks, and distance as much as possible, but almost no one could afford to stay home. They had to keep working.

For the vast majority of people, risking illness or death has simply become the price of survival.

Mr. Arriaga’s own attempts to stay away from the market lasted only a month before he blew through his life savings and trudged back to work in fear.“I’ve got nothing left,” he said on a recent weekend, bracing himself for another long night in the market. “It’s either go out there and face the virus, or sit here and starve.”

Now, Mexico has the fourth-highest death toll in the world, with more than 70,000 lives officially lost to the virus. Experts say the real number may be tens of thousands more than that.

Tomas BravoMexico City8h agoGreat article. Even living in the same city there are different realities playing out, and this gives a good insight into the stories of some of the worst struck by the pandemic. Some local media have talked of these issues, but there is an ongoing effort from the government to deny these allegations. It is nice to see a story told from the perspective of individuals through which the bigger issues that have paved the way for this crisis are highlighted

(b) we see no arguments about mask wearing in CDMX stores/areas, and witnessed concerns about customers shooting up USA grocery stories if masks are enforced,

gtodonGuanajuato, Mexico3h ago@Ignacio Colin Perhaps in your neighborhood of sprawling Mexico City, the "community is strong and doing its part." Where I live, in Guanajuato, about half the people on the streets, and even in the stores, decline to wear masks, and half of those who do wear masks don't wear them properly; they appear to think they're chin-guards. The same is true in nearby León, a much larger city. In the state of Guanajuato, only San Miguel de Allende, with its large foreign population, takes Covid seriously.

BVINew York7h agoPowerful article with powerful images. I felt close to the shopkeepers and their families. The intimacy of these stories and revealing personal impact in such detail, without judgment, makes the story so much more human. "At every level, there is simply less." A sadly perfect summation of this pandemic's impact.

IvanMemphis, TN9h agoTwo failures seem to be conspiring to make this a catastrophe. First the governments failure to institute simple low cost and effective measures to reduce the spreed - like mandatory and enforced masks in crowded public areas. Second the failure of the public to take it serious and follow common sense guidance - because of paranoia about the motives of experts and government. I guess they are not that different from the US, except they have less resources to counter the predictable outcomes of these failures.

gnacio ColinMexico City8h agoOnce again, we are portrayed as a country that diminishes the virus’ impact and downplays it. It’s a great read but tbh most of the responsibility lays on the President, who has been adamant about employing techniques that do not combat the virus. Nonetheless, Mexico City’s government led by a PhD, Claudia Sheinbaum has done a great job and has countered the President in many ways regarding the management. We have a dormant President who chooses to look elsewhere instead of looking for solutions (he’s done the same with medication purchases, education, ecology, human rights commissions, to say the least). The Mexican community is strong and is doing its part on mitigating this national (and global) tragedy.

D. HendersonMexico City4h ago@Jorge Romero and @ E. Voigt, you have points and they are well taken. I live in CMDX and work in rural MX. In July, we made a "necessary" risky cross-country drive to see Ohio family b/c we suspect that such is impossible until a vaccine in spring 2021 or later. We used masks, face shields, alcohol solutions when at two hotels & gas stations. Some anectodal sharing

Like many people in Iztapalapa, they felt a sense of shame associated with the virus.“There’s a stigma,” said Mr. Dominguez, the organizer. “No one wants to admit they had it.”

ExPatMXAjijic, Jalisco Mexico7h ago@observer " We shouldn't be reporting on these "poor countries" as if we are so far removed on our American pedestal any longer." Thank you. Mexico is a magnificent country and the people remind me of how Americans treated each other with kindness and friendliness when I was young. They make eye contact on the streets, wish you a good day, you'll see teenage boys taking young siblings places with care and loving. There are some places in the US that this happens but a lot more places that it doesn't. Is the government corrupt? Certainly. But they are open about it while the US government is equally corrupt but hides it behind religion or other convenient excuses. We have been adopted" into a few Mexican families and attend birthdays, wedding, and fiestas. This article made me want to cry. The poor in Mexico are struggling to survive just as the poor in the US are similarly struggling. This article put faces on the essential workers who are risking their lives to feed their families (and the rest of the country) which I think is needed so the rest of us who are lucky can identify with what this disease is doing to people.

(c) CDMX is MASSIVE, centro de abastos is massive, hard to relay really its size and diversity and intensity. It IS "formally" and "informally" opening up again for many of the reasons explained in this article; it "feels" like a deal is being made with the COVID-19 devil (only time and the virus will dictate outcomes).

ONE. Thank you NYT for this article and to the commentators for their sharing. Good. TWO. When comparing citizen behavior in CDMX streets to what we saw in TX, TN, AR, KY, OH we note (a) NOW 95-100% of people in CDMX streets, metro, tianguis (markets) use masks, compared with 40-50% (or less depending on USA area),

PaulRio de Janeiro10h agoI cannot speak for Mexico, but I can speak for Brazil, where many cities have seen their numbers plummet, sometimes by over 90%. This is the case in Rio where much has been open for weeks, months in the case of malls and many other public places, without dire consequences.

At this very moment I personally know more people sick in Europe than I do here in Rio or even in Brazil. This is not to minimize the impact that Covid had on Latin America, on Brazil and on Rio. The opposite in fact: it is close to undeniable that some measure of herd immunity was attained in many of the hardest hit places, including New York City, northern Italy and several Brazilian cities.

d) urban CDMX life is different than rural MX life (and other MX cities) always and now; yet, there is a general lack of trust across the board about info and institutions, so much so that we know the death rate IS not accurate, many die in their homes rather than go to hospitals). Survive is what we all must do.

The recovery of places like Manaus, Recife, Rio, São Paulo and other Brazilian cities has been woefully underreported by the New York Times and others. It is too bad because an analysis of the data and of the facts on the ground could yield valuable insight for other countries and cities, especially in poor or emerging countries.

misinformation was as rampant as the virus itself.Ms. Aquino’s cellphone brimmed with clips sent via WhatsApp. Some claimed that the virus was a Chinese conspiracy, others that bleach was a cure. Even President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered his own theories, contending that a clean conscience helped prevent infection.

“I’ve heard government is paying people to claim their loved ones died from Covid,” Ms. Aquino whispered. “I have two friends who were offered money.”At best, the rumors sowed confusion and doubt. At worst, they were a death sentence.

A dull acceptance of the new reality filled Iztapalapa: Coronavirus is a necessary risk, and the reward for taking it is merely survival.

Thank you for this story about our new home country. We live far from Mexico City in the state of Jalisco where the governor and local officials took the virus seriously. So far their efforts have been rewarded with per capita numbers of cases around 20 per 100,000, some of the consistently best results anywhere in the world.

I was born and raised in Mexico and all my family is still there. Back in March I received video in which a central de abastos worker mocks the pandemic and people who are quarantining calling them lazy, and those wearing masks, gullible. The video to me helped illustrate the hard truth that México, like the USA, has parallel narratives. There are those who believe the science and consume fact-checked news, like my relatives. And there are also many who believe conspiracy theories or folk remedies, including misinformation on YouTube. I believe the official tally of the sick and dead is much lower than the real numbers. This disease is exposing the fragility of Mexico’s institutions, much like it has American ones.

As a full-time resident of Mexico I can attest that most Mexicans either have had a family member ill from Covid and/or have lost a family member to Covid. It has attacked not only low income but also middle and upper classes. It is rampant here but unfortunately the wealthy have better access to adequate health care. Most Mexicans I know are very vigilant about mask wearing; unfortunately the American tourists who come to holiday here are not vigilant and are reluctant to wear masks.

ilToronto

Rachael EiermannLos Cabos, Mexico

Brad BurnsMexico

the signs of a crisis that looks like the Great Depression are impossible to hide. In Anaheim, Calif., home to Disneyland, cars formed half-mile-long lines in two different directions, waiting to pick up free food. In San Antonio, 10,000 cars waited for hours to receive food from a food bank. Even still, Republicans balk at expanding access to food stamps while hunger is on the rise. Nearly one in five children 12 and younger don’t have enough to eat.

That “way of life” may also begin to look like mass homelessness. Through the first five days of April, 31 percent of tenants nationwide had failed to pay their rent

Forty-three million households rent in the U.S., but there is no public rental assistance for residents who lose the ability to afford their rent.

Many elected officials in the Republican Party have access to Covid-19 testing, quality health care and the ultimate cushion of wealth to protect them. Yet they suggest others take the “risk” of returning to work as an act of patriotism

While the recent stimulus bills doled out trillions of dollars to corporate America and the “financial sector,” the smallest allocations have provided cash, food, rent or health care for citizens. The gaps in the thin membrane of a safety net for ordinary Americans have made it impossible to do anything other than return to work.

This isn’t just malfeasance or incompetence. Part of the “American way of life” for at least some of these elected officials is keeping workers just poor enough to ensure that the “essential” work force stays shows up each day

In place of decent wages, hazard pay, robust distribution of personal protective equipment and the simplest guarantees of health and safety, these lawmakers use the threat of starvation and homelessness to keep the work force intact.

In the case of the meatpacking industry, there is not even a veil of choice, as those jobs are inexplicably labeled essential, as if life cannot go on without meat consumption

The largely immigrant and black meatpacking work force has been treated barely better than the carcasses they process. They are completely expendable. Thousands have tested positive, but the plants chug along, while employers offer the bare minimum by way of safety protections, according to workers. If there were any question about the conditions endured in meatpacking plants, consider that 145 meat inspectors have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and three have died.

Discipline in the U.S. has always included low and inconsistent unemployment and welfare combined with stark deprivation. Each has resulted in a hyper-productive work force with few benefits in comparison to America’s peer countries.

if the social distancing and closures were ever going to be successful, it would have meant providing all workers with the means to live in comfort at home while they waited out the disease. Instead, they have been offered the choice of hunger and homelessness or death and disease at work.

The governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, made this painfully clear when she announced that not only was Iowa reopening, but that furloughed workers in private or public employment who refused to work out of fear of being infected would lose current unemployment benefits. She described these workers’ choices as a “voluntary quit.”

This is exacerbated by the reluctance of the Trump administration to bail out state governments. That the U.S. government would funnel trillions to corporate America but balk at sending money to state governments also appears to be part of “the American way of life” that resembles the financial sector bailout in 2008.

These are also the bitter fruits of decades of public policies that have denigrated the need for a social safety net while gambling on growth to keep the heads of U.S. workers above water just enough to ward off any real complaints or protests.

During the long and uneven recovery from the Great Recession, the warped distribution of wealth led to protests and labor organizing. The crisis unfolding today is already deeper and much more catastrophic to a wider swath of workers than anything since the 1930s. The status quo is untenable.