That people may be thinking about more than just the stock market, recession, and consumption in the wake of the pandemic and the shutterin...
That people may be thinking about more than just the stock market, recession, and consumption in the wake of the pandemic and the shuttering of the economy should be obvious. Among the working class, whether employed in low-paying if steady jobs or, as is quite common in South Asia, Africa, Mexico, and South America, as daily wage-labourers, or slogging it out in the so-called gig economy, there are more pressing economic concerns and the fear is palpable. Initially, in many countries, it was uncertain who would pay for 14 days of quarantine.
Social distancing and the practice of quarantine is undoubtedly an unadulterated good from the standpoint of public health officials interested primarily in seeking to halt the transmission of the virus, but how does it help to put food on the table? The state may have assumed much of the responsibility of quarantine, but how far people will have gone into debt when they needed medical care will become clear over time. It is palpably clear that the poor, as described elsewhere in this book, are disproportionately affected by the disease, and many have been turned away from hospitals.
