Are we really there, already?

Are we truly at the point where, to save "the American Way of Life", we have to roll back the lockdown no matter what the cost in human lives?

Are we even close?

There must be a point where we have gone as far as we can in borrowing against the future in order to finance the enforced leisure of 25 % or more of the workforce, at a cost of a trillion or two a month.

[Update. Just now Ruhle told Schumer we've already spent three trillion on relief.]

At some point payback becomes incredible and truly impossible, banks fail, savings are wiped out, the government cannot borrow, lockdown collapses of its own weight, and we get a true global depression far worse than anything in the past.

And that would be accompanied by greater political chaos than was seen in the worst of the 20th century and maybe wars far more dangerous than then and very possibly far more destructive.

This is a truth always hovering behind the anti-lockdown objection that "the cure cannot be worse than the disease", though it is not the same as that.

The public health authorities are not and cannot be expected to be the ones who will see such disaster coming and demand governments relent, take the cuffs off, and rollback the lockdowns.

They are professionally oblivious of the danger.

They have already said more than once that, from their point of view, the lockdown should cogntinue until antivirals and effective vaccines become available and all the uninfected are inoculated, no matter how long that takes.

Today, informed people have warned they expect the virus to remain rampant and unchecked for another three years.

Workable and safe vaccines typically take well more than 18 months to develop.

But lockdown is not indefinitely sustainable and even trusted Democrats like Andrew Cuomo agree it has to be phased back as soon and as quickly as possible and that we cannot wait years or even many months for that to begin in earnest.

The rollback has to happen before irretrievable harm is done and government efforts to avert disaster themselves cause economic and other harms just as bad or even worse.

Just as men shave before they need it, the idea being never to get to the point of needing it, we have to open up the economy before it suffers too much harm.

There will not be a bright line, a clear and unarguable moment when it's time to back off.

But the call has to be made some time and maybe, in the nature of the case, because disaster will not have already started, it will inevitably seem too soon.

And in the nature of the case the calls will not come from public health experts but bankers, economists, financiers, and politicians.

So.

Are we there yet?

Are we even close?

P.S.

Another way to put it: "democratic capitalism", as Obama used to call it, must be saved.

Actually existing democratic capitalism must be saved.

Actually existing inequalities must be saved.

Chaos, wars, and revolutions, with their inevitable accompaniment of a vast toll of deaths, must be averted.

Ending up with democratic capitalism after half a century or more of vastly deadly stupidities and waste is not good enough.

Somewhere we have to draw a line under the lockdown.

And that will all but certainly have to be before we have good antivirals and vaccines.

So, are we there yet?