Columns

This week, President Donald Trump began openly considering at what point the American government ought to take steps to reopen the American economy. He explained: “Our country wasn’t built to be shut down. America will again and soon be open for business,” suggesting that the timeline will be weeks instead of months.

“We don’t have any...!” Fill in the blank. 

People are stocking up on things, fearing that we will be stuck in our homes, under quarantine, without essential supplies. 

Some hoard toilet paper. A popular internet video features someone driving up to what appears to be a drug dealer but is really someone selling toilet paper. 

When it became hard to find hand sanitizer in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state would produce its own, made by prison labor.

In the time of coronavirus, I headed to southern Utah’s remote canyon country to do some extreme social distancing. 

All I knew when I emerged a few days later in western Colorado was that the world was …confusing. I half-expected to find empty highways, and shuttered businesses. What I witnessed was an armada of black SUVs, loaded down with passengers and skis, all headed to the resort town of Telluride. This was mid-March.

This week, President Donald Trump came under fire for his use of the phrase “Chinese virus” to describe the coronavirus, the source of the new pandemic that has led to a global economic shutdown as well as lockdowns of citizens in every major Western country. That media have somehow found time to hone in on the one issue that matters least — the labeling of a Chinese virus as such — in the middle of an unprecedented planetwide freeze demonstrates the utter unseriousness of those objecting. That the term should be controversial at all is nearly beyond belief.