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Unsanitized: The COVID-19 Report for Oct. 22, 2020

Paying Restaurants to Close is a Public Health Imperative

Plus, that payroll tax deferral

 

An outdoor dining area in the parking lot of Coco's Bakery and
Restaurant in Montebello, California. (Kirby Lee via AP)

Universal Family Care

Here are today's stories from our special issue on universal family
care , as we pivot to solutions:

* Brittany Gibson looks at family care models from around the world
,
finding options for a universal family care program in the U.S.

* Gabrielle Gurley focuses on Washington state
,
which has instituted a social insurance program for long-term care, paid
family and medical leave, and a cap on child care expenses for
low-income families. It's the closest to a Care For All state in the
U.S.

* Rachel M. Cohen analyzes the politics of family care
,
including new polling showing a universal system to be popular.

* And Seth Borgos and Dorian Warren highlight activism around child care

as a case study in how to build a care movement.

You can browse these and other stories at prospect.org/familycare

Click to Support The American Prospect

Just Pay Restaurants to Close Already

We're fully engaged in the third wave of the coronavirus crisis, with
cases and hospitalizations rising to August levels
, and deaths starting to upswing a bit
as well. The optimistic case

for the virus sees us about halfway through, with 9 months or so until
we can see anything like normal on the horizon. Given that we're in
that range, we can get simpler about the steps that need to be taken
from a public health standpoint. A mask mandate is the first,
controversial though it may be. The second, picked up by Elizabeth
Rosenthal today
,
is to pay bars and restaurants to close.  

Governors and mayors are nervous, especially without the guarantee of
federal fiscal relief, to lock down their economies. But that actually
matters less than you think. In a raging pandemic, the bulk of people
are actually sharp enough to stay inside. Lack of demand
,
not lockdowns, has crushed sectors that rely on steady streams of people
gathering, especially indoors. So whether there are orders to shutter or
not, bars and restaurants will struggle to survive financially.

We also know that these businesses are key vectors

for community spread. You can't wear a mask while eating and drinking,
and as the weather cools, these unmasked people will be pushed indoors
into crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. This look at a college town in
Wisconsin

shows the general direction: gregarious kids congregate at bars and
restaurants and catch the virus, then it passes to older people, and
then those older people die. Maybe it goes through a couple iterations,
from students to parents, or to nursing home employees and then to
residents. But it spreads, and that starts at the most basic place where
a lot of people are getting together. Maybe death rates have dropped but
not enough to keep vulnerable people safe.

**Read all of our Unsanitized reports here**

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Now, it would be easy to say that we should just close bars and
restaurants until the danger is lifted. That has run into public
resistance and statewide bans on local mandates. And for restaurant and
bar owners, already facing near-extinction, an extended shutdown is just
impossible.

The way to give these owners a chance to keep the community healthy and
survive is to just pay them. Pay them what they need to stay closed for
in-person dining, with their workers paid, until the national emergency
ends. The workers will pay taxes on their salaries, so state and local
governments won't lose out as much. The recent innovation in to-go
meals

could be maintained, keeping restaurants a little busy and in
competition with one another. The owners won't join in common cause
with "liberators" and anti-maskers. And if the optimist case is correct,
we'll have to do this for months, not years.

As Rosenthal notes, the precedent is farm supports, where we pay farmers
not to grow crops for both supply-and-demand and environmental reasons.
If you close just bars and restaurants you've gone a surprisingly long
way to eliminating spread, and minimizing the events that allow the
virus to run rampant.

There's a bill called the Restaurants Act that purports to do this,
but there's no requirement in it to maintain payroll
.
If that can be fixed-and if tipped workers are made whole through
it-that's a baseline for something that would be one of the biggest
public health interventions you can do right now. Unfortunately, by the
time we have a Congress willing to put something like this together, it
may be too late.

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Programming Note

Starting tomorrow and through at least Election Day, Unsanitized will
focus on the 2020 race, from the presidential election to the battles
within the states. The pandemic is a world-historical event, and I'll
still carve out some room for coronavirus coverage. But so much, with
the pandemic, with our economy, with our society, hinges on who controls
Washington and state houses come January 2021. So we're going to set
our energies there.

Gubmint Loans

When it was announced in August, the idea of Trump's pretend payroll
tax cut (a loan, really, as you have to pay back) seemed like it would
be important. Joe Biden even picked up on it as a way to talk to seniors
about Trump undermining Social Security by fiddling with its funding
source. But because it was so ridiculous-companies would have to yank
back whatever they allowed to their employees, the equivalent of taking
away a full paycheck sometime in 2021-practically no private employers
have used it, and it faded from the headlines.

Arthur Delaney and Dave Jamieson bring it back today
,
focusing on federal employees, who were forced into the regime. They
talk to union presidents advising employees to set aside the extra 6.2
percent they're getting in paychecks now, because it's going back to
the government come January. There's been almost no information from
the IRS on how the thing is supposed to work, and how much will be
clawed back later. There's really no economic impact because so few
people are using it, and all of that impact will be offset in future
quarters. It's unclear what happens if someone quits or is fired
before the payback period, and whether they're personally responsible.

In other words, it's like every other policy implementation in the
Trump era: a mess.

Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair

210
.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Not promoting stimulus talk to the top of the newsletter until
there's any indication that the Senate will pass

a bill. "Disinformation" has been thrown around a lot but that's what
these stimulus negotiations are it seems. (CNN)

* The Senate's "skinny" bill failed
,
and hey, $500 billion is a bigger one-year boost than the stimulus,
under pundit logic Democrats should take the deal, right? (Vox)

* I guess the White House's proposed cut to COVID funds

gets subtracted out of the stimulus bottom line? (Politico)

* Also the $9 billion in testing

that's gone unspent? (Business Insider)

* Prisoners are entitled to stimulus checks from back in April, by court
order, and prisons continue to throw up roadblocks
.
(NBC News)

* Oh good, private equity leveraged buyouts are back

after a pandemic lull. (Wall Street Journal)

* Will a mask backlash in Orange County sink freshman Democrat Harley
Rouda
?
(New York Magazine)

* The second economic crash in a little over a decade has young people
anxious
.
(CNBC)

* Texas woman dies of COVID while on a Spirit Airlines flight
.
(Washington Post)

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