HOPE THE OPTIMISTS ARE RIGHT.

The stock market is a little like the Bible: you can find something in it to support almost any argument. Still, the market’s 700-point jump Monday morning on news a COVID vaccine had produced antibodies in eight healthy people demonstrates pretty convincingly that health and the economy are not fundamentally in conflict. These days, investors are hanging on any piece of good health news. A vaccine that worked would be a boon for health but also great news for the economy. Granted, stock-market sharks may be less driven by empathy than by a desire to see corporate profits return to something more like normal. Whatever: they end up rooting for health.

The vaccine reaction is also a sign of how eager people are to hope. Stock-players are one thing but business people in general always seem more optimistic than the rest of us. It’s partly self-selection: to be in business at all these days, even before the virus, you had to be optimistic, given the many influential segments of society that are openly hostile to enterprise.

Also on Monday, the New York Fed released the results of its latest monthly survey of New York region service-sector business leaders, which it conducted May 4 through May 10. The facts are obviously bad. The average firm reported it had laid off or furloughed 23.7 per cent of its employees — a complete disaster. And yet, asked how long it would be until things were back to normal, the average response was 8.1 months, the median 6.0 months. Back to normal! Asked for their best-case and worse-case scenarios, the median leader’s response was 12 months for the worst case and three

WILL STARTING UP THE ECONOMY, AS MOST PLACES IN NORTH AMERICA ARE DOING, NECESSARILY BE BAD FOR HEALTH?

months for the best. That these were median responses does mean half of those answering think the worst-case scenario is more than 12 months and the best-case more than three. On the other hand, it also means half think worst and best cases will be less than that.

Hold that thought for a second: half of respondents think that in a best-case scenario things will be back to normal in less than three months and, in a worst-case scenario, less than 12 months. And these are business people from the New York area, whose metropolis had a turn, following Wuhan and then northern Italy, as the epidemic’s global epicentre. And they’ve just laid off or furloughed a quarter of their workforce.

The survey also asked about business leaders’ experience with the U.S. Small Business Administration’s “Paycheck Protection Program” loans. A quarter said their firms were either too big to apply or had decided not to apply. How had the remaining three-quarters of firms done? None — “0.0 per cent” — had been denied funding; 14.5 per cent were still waiting to hear back; 5.7 per cent had got partial funding; and 79.7 per cent had received full funding.

The impression most people have, based on the daily goon show in the White House briefing room, is that U.S. pandemic policy is a mess. And in many respects — testing, procurement, consistency of message — it clearly is. But more than 80 per cent of firms who applied for loans receiving everything they asked for by May 10 is an impressive performance. Maybe it helps explain why these business leaders seem optimistic.

The stock market undoubtedly is right: what’s good for health is good for the economy. But will starting up the economy, as most places in North America are doing, necessarily be bad for health? We’re all guessing. My guess is: probably.

You might think of the first stage of the response to the virus having been to slow its spread by reducing the number of interactions people have with one another, including interactions to produce GDP. Lockdown did that. And the sharp reduction in interacting hammered GDP.

But lockdown also accustomed people to step two in the process: reducing the health risk associated with each interaction they have. The first time you wore a mask or gave someone a wide berth on the street you probably felt silly. The same with lining up outside grocery stores or dealing with a cashier standing behind Plexiglas. But not any more. We may not have needed two full months of lockdown to learn these lessons. But learn them we have.

As we ramp back up these now safer interactions, does overall risk rise? Almost certainly. As the Macdonald-Laurier Institute said in its open letter to the prime minister last week: “Any easing of the lockdown is going to increase the infection rate — the crucial question is how we can do it without increasing the death rate.”

The market is clearly right: a vaccine would be great. Life before the lockdown taught us we couldn’t go on as we had. Life in the lockdown has taught us we can interact more safely. Now we see what we make of it. I hope the optimism of the private-sector actors who will be leading the recovery ends up being justified.