You don’t have to be a general sending men into battle to actively weigh the value of human lives versus other objectives and goals. We could give every person who gets on every airplane a parachute, but it’s not worth the cost. We could ban pools, or double-down—why don’t we ban swimming entirely? It’s not worth the cost, that’s why.
The tell-tale sign of this type of thinking is the phrase “out of an abundance of caution”. That basically means “we aren’t sure what to do but we definitely don’t want to go against the grain AND risk the worst-case scenario”. I’m not saying this is bad, or wrong, or overly risk-averse! I am saying I’ve felt it. I understand.
The first quarter of 2020 ended on the last day of March, but we won’t have the first Q1 estimate by the BEA until April 29, which they call an “advance estimate” (which means it could be way off). Oh, and for the record, the most common definition of a “recession” is negative GDP growth for two consecutive quarters. So, if you do the math, we can’t even *know* if we’re in a recession until six months or more after it started! This lag is an argument against the usefulness of these sorts of macroeconomics numbers, the equivalent of Karen Smith’s weather report in Mean Girls: “It’s 68 degrees, and there’s a 30% chance that it’s already raining.”