The Irish Times:

Donald Trump is talking incessantly about reopening the US economy. The EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spoke about “protecting livelihoods” as she launched a roadmap for lifting containment measures last week. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has been talking about how we “will reawaken the sleeping giant that is our economy”.

All this talk of reopening the economy seems a bit tone deaf. It overlooks a tectonic shift that happened in all of our psyches over the last few weeks, when we found ourselves stripped of our busyness, and when the social signifiers of success we expended so much effort accumulating – the cars, gym memberships, packed social calendars – became obsolete overnight. Read article