Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast and welcome to the month of July July 1st,

2020. I am John Pothworth, the editor of commentary magazine with me as always executive editor Abe

Reinhwald depressed today. Hi Abe. Hi John, D.D. I am. Yes, associate editor Noa Rosman,

kind of in a depressed household today. Hi Noah. Hey John. Yep. And Christine Rose and not

looking particularly depressed, but she could be depressed. Are you depressed Christine? That depends

on how this podcast episode goes. Okay, well, the crushing morocity, I think crushing morocity

is infectious. I am not particularly depressed, but I think I will allow Abe to explain why just

before we started, he said is everybody depressed today. Well, it's really the because of the dominant

story here of the COVID numbers of the rising infections and of states slowing or reversing their

opening plans, including New York now, which is not going to open indoor restaurants on the

schedule that they had that we had initially thought that all of this coming on July 1st,

which is sort of undeniable deep into the actual summer under normal circumstances here,

while suddenly feeling like we're back in April in terms of national mood or something is

extraordinarily depressing. So the restaurants thing, it sounds really frivolous, but it's not at all.

And New Jersey, our governor did the same thing. We were scheduled to reopen indoor dining with

limited capacity tomorrow. And the governor decided I think yesterday or two days ago to postpone it

indefinitely as a result of these rising cases in the West. But just about every restaurant was

preparing for a big July four weekend and bought everything they needed to to support that weekend

and now has to trash it all. And that's got to be really devastating after the last three months.

And I, you know, what you're seeing in Florida and Arizona, these really crazy rising case numbers.

I mean, without getting too deep into my personal details, my in-laws have property down in Florida

and they went down there to go work up the property about three weeks ago and it's pretty stable

...