Newsletter Week of 15 May 2020

As I write this, Maryland is beginning to ease restrictions on some businesses and relaxing stay-at-home orders. Other states are taking more aggressive action. Personally, as a soon-to-be 62-year-old diabetic, I'm going to continue staying at home and resisting physical contact with others.

I worry about workers, often low-income, in these reopening businesses. There's already evidence that some will be forced back to work regardless of risk to themselves and their families. Some states are terminating unemployment payments for such workers—giving them the choice of risking disease or risking eviction and starvatiion.

There's been a lot of talk about "liberty" and "freedom." It's hard for me to see how forcing people into a dangerous situtation can possibly be consistent with liberty and freedom.

Epidemiologists—who know what they're talking about—are virtually unanimous in saying it's too soon for this. They tell us that if we continue along this course of "reopening," many more people will sicken and die. Getting a haircut or manicure, or boozing it up at a bar, seems to me to be an awfully small benefit for the cost.