"Back to Work" Recedes to May/June

"Back to work" declarations by state officials have gone from mid-April to some unknown date in the future. Trump now says that we should expect great things by June 1. New York City's public health system is teetering.

World Socialist Web Site sees the coronavirus pandemic as the end of the current system:

The economic and social consequences of such a public health catastrophe are incalculable. As production and the real economy continue to contract, not even the trillions in cash infusions approved by both big business parties will be able to stabilize the financial markets, the central preoccupation of the financial oligarchy and its representative-in-chief, Trump.

Social and class tensions will continue to build, leading to an inevitable explosion of popular opposition. And the utter discrediting of all of the political institutions of American capitalism—which has proven incapable of preparing for or responding to a long predicted flu pandemic—is fueling an enormous exacerbation of internal tensions within the ruling elite and its state.

The entire constitutional framework of the United States, including the relationship between the federal government and the states, is showing signs of fracturing.

It's noteworthy that nature had to intervene to remove the well past its sell-by-date socioeconomic paradigm which dates back to Thatcher-Reagan. 

Of course neoliberalism is not gone yet. It's going to take a lot more pain and suffering, and, inevitably, a complete economic collapse to usher in something new, and there's always the possibility that what's new will be be even worse.

Though the whole planet has been in pandemic crisis mode for a month now, there is still much that is unknown about COVID-19. Why so many asymptomatic positives? Some reporting casts doubt on China's amazing turnaround because of its practice of refusing to report asymptomatic positives in the overall COVID-19 numbers.

My feeling is that I must've been asymptomatic positive sometime in February. How do I know? I ran a horrible 5K on February 29. The only other times I performed worst in a 5K in the last ten years were 1) when I had a bad case of food poisoning and 2) when I had the flu. So something was wrong. Then in March I was mildly symptomatic. You couldn't get a test in Seattle. So I didn't try. Most people at work were already self-quarantining, so I didn't really worry about infecting others. And as for social distancing, I am the king and have been for years.

But here's the problem. While I feel much better than I did earlier in the month, I think the virus is hanging around in my body. So who is to say the coronavirus won't (re)emerge the next time all these asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic COVID-19 people are immune system zapped? Who can say that when the order to return to work is given that it won't set off another cycle of infection?

That being said, other than answering the phones, I am enjoying the time alone in the office.