People don't seem to understand that nothing is "getting back to normal" for a long while, a year or maybe two, if not longer. Any policy that addresses short term pain ($1200 checks, loans to businesses, reopening nail salons and gyms in Georgia) is inadequate.

We're going to have to learn live with the virus in our midst. Economic activity will be durably depressed. People are going to be deeply impoverished, here and in the global South.

Inventing policies to keep billions of people alive for the long haul is what I mean by learning to live with the virus.

It is what it is, not every country can be South Korea.

Besides, even if we control the spread of the virus in one city or one region it's largely moot if it flares up somewhere else.

Many social systems here in the US have already proven their inadequacy, from unemployment insurance and federalism to private hospitals facing cash crunch because of a drop in elective surgeries.