The dynamic here is really obvious and has been for a long time. Local officials are afraid to shut down businesses that spread COVID because they're rightly worried that those businesses can't survive another lockdown.

The absolute minimum federal public health response right now has to include shutting these places down, giving them money to weather the lockdown, and giving their workers money to weather the lockdown.

This will cost trillions of dollars, and that's ok.

If we do not do this, we will see swift, permanent damage to our medical infrastructure and probably end up losing most of the businesses within a few months anyway. We are already almost out of hospital beds in the upper midwest. The time to act was July.