A Third Of Americans Will Remain In Quarantine Even If Instructed To Get Back To Normal Life And Work

Last week we pointed out perhaps the most critical distinction as the US begins the long and arduous process of recovery from the coronavirus pandemic: that voluntary lockdowns are worse than official ones as they can’t be turned off by fiat, because as Rabobank’s Michael Every put it, “if people stay at home anyway, the economy will not recover as hoped.”

Adding to the complexity, in recent days we have observed that this distinction has increasingly fallen along party lines, with democratic states refusing to reopen or happy to wait (and in the case of California warning it may be shut for another 3 months), while mostly Republican states already pursuing a partial or full reopening.

This particular distinction was featured front and center in the latest CivicScience survey, which found that 69% of respondents would not resume all normal activities after states lift stay-at-home orders, while nearly a third of Americans, or 31%, would remain under quarantine even if local governments issued a notice to go back to normal day-to-day activities in order to prevent an economic collapse.

While we won’t discuss the political affiliation of these 31%, the data above underscores the nature of the crisis: until the virus is under control, and until the reopening is viewed as a political issue – especially if continued state shutdowns help cripple the Trump economy ahead of the November election – there will be a very substantial speed limit on the economic recovery, especially as Democratic states do everything in their power to delay reopening for as long as possible.