May 2020 didn’t just reopen businesses, it staged a declaration: we’re done with this. But reopening became symbols and vibes instead of systems, pushing enforcement downhill to the lowest-paid workers and turning public health into identity theatre. A performance asks you to believe. A plan asks you to trust, and trust has to be earned.
The push to reopen is real, and so is the pain behind it. But reopening is not a switch. It is an allocation of risk, and without repair, it becomes a transfer of burden onto the least protected. Rules that aren’t enforced become theatre, trust becomes the second casualty, and “freedom” turns into a slogan…
March 2020 is a stress test, not only of hospitals and supply chains, but of the democratic habits that keep power accountable when fear is in the air. Emergencies expand authority, fracture trust, and tempt leaders to treat transparency as optional. A republic can survive quarantine. The question is whether its standards can.