First off, I’m sending wishes to President Trump and the first lady that they recover quickly from their diagnosis of COVID-19 and that their symptoms are mild.
As leader of the world’s biggest economy, the president has, understandably, wanted to downplay the virus these past 10 months. Fortunately, markets stumbled only slightly at Friday’s news, but his diagnosis reminds us that we have not turned the corner on this coronavirus.
Sectors such as travel, hospitality, entertainment and retail, especially, are not out of the woods, which is why it has been important to take the virus seriously from the get-go. Life can not get back to normal until the public feels confident that venturing out into the world will not put them at risk. We are not there.
As we have learned, not all industries are affected the same. If anything, technology stocks have remained healthy, proving that something like a pandemic has made us even more reliant on being able to work and shop from our homes.
Energy stocks, however, remain in a slump and are likely to get worse as people are once again reminded it’s safer to stay at home.
As such, this week Disney let go 28,000 full-time employees at its theme parks, and American Airlines and United Airlines cut a total of 32,000 positions.
Manufacturing continues to be repressed and rehiring has stalled. A bit more than half of the jobs lost to the pandemic have been recovered. That’s 11.4 million of the 22 million jobs lost this spring. The rate of unemployment is 7.9%.
All this is to say it’s going to be a long slog to recovery. Economists predict it will take years, not months or quarters, to regain all the jobs lost.
THE PRESIDENT’S diagnosis also proves that even someone with the best healthcare in the world at their disposal is vulnerable to COVID-19. No doubt his cavalier attitude toward the pandemic also made him more susceptible to contracting the virus.
The president has company. In the last three days more than 40,000 have contracted the coronavirus each day, putting the U.S. total at 7.28 million. U.S. deaths from the virus are now at 208,000.
With the flu season upon us, it’s all a timely reminder to follow the procedures advocated by health experts — face masks, social distancing and frequent hand-washing — which have been proven in preventing the spread of both COVID-19 and the flu.
Every day is a new opportunity to do our best to keep our communities safe from the virus. There’s no time to lose.
