| A devastated airline industry. Massive financial stimulus. Children out of school for weeks. Sports seasons canceled. New York City restaurants, bars and shops that close and never come back. A meteor-like destruction of stock-market value. Wages lost. Jobs lost. Loss. That's what success looks like. City by city, the world's largest economy is putting itself through one of the most painful doses of preventive medicine in modern history, and it's still not clear if it will be enough to stop a medical catastrophe. What much of the U.S. is about to go through is unprecedented (except, of course, in the parts of the world that just went through it). And it's clear that there's no map for this—after the worst drop in U.S. equities since 1987, U.S. stock futures hit their up limit on Monday night. Nobody knows what will happen next. The White House has called for a 15-day effort to stop the disease from spreading, saying that anyone who feels ill, or is at risk from Covid-19, should stay home. Some cities have gone further. San Francisco has told people to shelter in place for three weeks, shuttering businesses. Pennsylvania has ordered all non-essential businesses to close for two weeks. New York has darkened its restaurants and bars. If this works – and everyone should hope it does, and as quickly as possible – people will emerge angry, financially hurt, and forever questioning whether their leaders made the right choices. There will be an inevitable backlash to the choices made in the U.S., especially as families and businesses feel markets, commerce and movement grind to a halt in some places. Success is going to feel a lot like failure. Failure will feel even worse.—Drew Armstrong | 
Post a Comment