Just keep in mind that "this year" is a long time. We've been doing Shelter In Place in California for barely over two weeks now. It seems like an eternity, it's been barely over two weeks. People are already going stir-crazy, and the economy can't take it for a whole lot longer. In the end, we're basically going to have a choice between a certain deep worldwide economic depression coupled with massive social unrest, or a probable hospital surge. It's not a hard choice. I would be very surprised if things don't start opening up by the end of April. Sports will take a bit longer, but once the world is back up and running, sports will jump back in soon.
It isnt a hard choice if you're talking about the difference between tens of thousands of Americans dying or hundreds of thousands of Americans dying. I'm not sure how many in this country recognize the gravity of those figures in such a short span of time. Less than 60,000 Americans died in the entire Vietnam War. We could double that figure in Coronavirus deaths by 2021 if we aren't diligent. People who were healthy yesterday will be dead tomorrow, and it's up to individual societies to determine just how much of that death is acceptable to them.
The thing is, "end of April" may not even represent the peak of COVID-19 infection in America, especially since states in the Midwest and the South aren't being hit very hard yet. But when they do get slammed, especially some of those Southern states with older populations and woefully inadequate hospital infrastructure, it's going to be a travesty. The only way to really mitigate that is with hypervigilant social distancing measures.
And yes, the country and the world will start opening up again this year, but slowly, deliberately, and in a limited capacity. I imagine that large gatherings for things like sporting events and concerts will remain restricted for some time. Gavin Newsom has already said he will be listening to the advice of experts on the subject of whether or not it's safe for major sports leagues to resume play in front of their home crowds. He's anticipating that he won't be relaxing those restrictions for many months. I think some sort of MLB/NFL/NBA action will occur this year, but I don't believe "normal play" will resume, particularly if the governors of populous states like CA and NY maintain heavy restrictions on large gatherings of people.
To be clear, I don't think the world is going to look
radically different on the other side of this pandemic. I'm not an alarmist. But COVID-19 is going to do a ton of damage, and things aren't going to go completely back to normal. Lots of people are going to die who shouldn't be dead. Parents. Grandparents. Friends. Neighbors. Governments are going to be in the unenviable position of picking economic winners and losers. Local businesses will fold. Restaurants you love won't return. Movie theaters could disappear.
People will press on, and we'll adapt to whatever our new reality ends up being, but I think Americans, in all their optimism, are still in the middle of reckoning with the severity of this pandemic. HIPAA laws prevent COVID-19 deaths from being "on the news" in the same visceral way that coffins returning home from Vietnam were. Just because it's harder to see doesn't mean it's not an absolute catastrophe, and "end of April" doesn't just challenge the wisdom of doctors, scientists, and other experts, it represents a stark moral choice. How much death is acceptable when we could implement simple measures to save lives?
Our economic prospects are much-diminished by COVID-19 in the short-term, but even economists admit that the long-term consequences of bungling our coronavirus response could be much worse than the pain we're feeling now.
