We’ve Broken the Public Patience Curve

We&r squo;ve heard a lot lately about breaking the coronavirus curve. Now let’s imagine another graph, this one measuring time gone by on its X axis and public patience with lockdown measures on its Y axis. We can picture the curve stretching upwards through March and early April, as breezy analogies to the common cold fall away and the pandemic’s destructive potential becomes evident. And then we hit the top of the curve. People have been trapped inside for weeks; many have lost their jobs and can do little about it. Patience begins to wane. The curve descends.

Given that I still struggle to calculate the area of a square, I’m not going to claim any kind of mathematical precision here. But the greater point is that patience with coronavirus measures will eventually run out. The COVID is a silent killer, largely invisible to those of us who don’t work in hospitals or at nursing homes, whereas the economic damage is more visible and shared more evenly. The quarantines also run counter to human nature, which demands activity, camaraderie, freedom. And of course, our country has a deep leave-me-alone streak, skeptical of authorities with framed degrees on their walls and protective of individual rights. Read Full Article »