How should we adapt our lives to this post-corona world? We shouldn’t. Life should return to normal. This may seem like the ignorant or inconsiderate answer but in my opinion, it is the right answer. Back in 2015 Bill Gates during a Ted Talk, spoke about what he thought was going to be the greatest risk to humans. He predicted “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war… we’ve invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We’re not ready for the next epidemic.”(Gates, 2015). Bill Gates may not be a doctor or epidemiologist but he is an intelligent man and I find it highly unlikely that he held this opinion on his own. I am not saying go into panic mode every time a tech billionaire predicts a world crippling event, but the writing was on the wall. 

Now I do not expect any figures such as Bill Gates to single-handedly fix our issues. That man does enough good in the world as it is. How about our President? He is supposed to guide the country through these rough times. I tend to shy away from politics because that tends to get ugly. But I am going to. In my eyes, a lot of the problems we face today are self-inflicted and caused by the lack of action from our President. He let his ego and self-obsession get in the way. Dr. Carter Mecher, the senior medical advisor of veterans affairs in an email to other public health experts and our President wrote “Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad. The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe”(Lipton, 2020). This was on January 28th a week after the first case was reported in the US. Two days later, “The health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II, directly warned Mr. Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during a call on Jan. 30”(Lipton, 2020). Again our “wonderful” president ignored the calls of top health officials. When this all first started we needed to start social distancing immediately. In my opinion, we should have done an Italy-style lockdown for two weeks. Where they made it illegal to leave your house but I do not think that would have been feasible. Instead, Trump dragged his feet to acknowledge it as an actual problem and now we’re in this mess for the foreseeable future.

One outcome of our “solution” for corona is our economy is in shambles. I could probably talk for hours maybe even days about how screwed we are but I will keep it short and sweet. Unemployment is currently at scary levels and will continue to rise. “Unemployment rose to 16.1% in April and that employers shed 22 million nonfarm payroll jobs—the equivalent of eliminating every job created in the past decade.” (Morath 2020). That quote alone will scare some people into hiding all their savings under their mattress. This “all-saving” stimulus bill that came out a few weeks ago won’t be saving anyone. On multiple occasions when I picked up goods from the supermarkets or Target I heard people bragging about how they’re spending their $1,200 check on a new 70’ TV.  So instead of paying their mortgage or credit card debt, they’re spending it on frivolous purchases. The SBB part of the bill was a complete flop. It was supposed to help small businesses stay afloat during this time. Instead new headlines like this surfaces, “While the program had a $10 million loan limit, big hotel and restaurant businesses were able to apply through multiple subsidiaries if each location had less than 500 employees. Consequently, many small business owners were unable to receive any financial assistance before the initial funding ran out.” (Rogers 2020). So instead of bailing out the small mom and pop shops, big businesses such as Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse were able to obtain loans.  Our economy in the coming months is going to be an even bigger mess once people start defaulting on their mortgages and can not pay their rents.

So why must we return to normal as soon as it is deemed safe? As a country, we can’t afford it. If we do not jumpstart our economy soon we will feel the impacts for years it will be way worse than 08. We can’t let the mistakes from the government slow us as a country. As a country we need to learn from our mistakes this time and move on. Hopefully, we will be better prepared for when this happens again because it will. 

-Conner Polizzi-Gullo

Work Cited

Bill Gates: The next Outbreak? (2015). TED-TALK.

Lipton, E., Sanger, D. E., Haberman, M., & Michael. (2020, April 11). He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html

Morath, E. (2020, May 3). April Jobs Report Likely to Show Highest Unemployment Rate on Record. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/april-jobs-report-likely-to-show-highest-unemployment-rate-on-record-11588514401

Rogers, K. (2020, April 23). Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse owner says it will repay $20 million in small business loans. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/ruths-chris-steakhouse-owner-says-it-will-repay-20-million-in-small-business-loan.html