“Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more,” Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel told Lawrence O’Donnell last weekend on MSNBC. He continued, “How are people supposed to find work if this goes on in some form for a year and a half? Is all that economic pain worth trying to stop COVID-19? The truth is we have no choice.”

In recent weeks, Washington has failed Main Street yet again with its heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all approach to stopping the coronavirus pandemic. Yes, of course we should listen to health experts and continue to engage in social distancing and other safe practices: It’s our duty to our fellow Americans, especially the most vulnerable.

There is no shortage of negative news right now. The uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has put millions of Americans out of work. People are scared to buy food at the grocery store and wonder when things will ever begin to feel normal again.

The phrase “Never let a crisis go to waste” has resurfaced recently. President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a product of the Chicago political machine, most famously gave Democrats this advice amid the financial crisis of 2008 to push through a laundry list of the progressive agenda. We are seeing the same thing as part of Democrats’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This time around, one of the top items on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) list is vote by mail. Democrats for years have been looking for ways to weaken voter laws. They claim it will make it easier for folks to vote. Of course, anyone who opposes Democratic efforts to weaken election integrity is subject to the usual unfounded and meaningless blanket criticisms from the left.

In just the past week, more than six million American workers applied for unemployment benefits as the United States entered another month of social distancing and quarantine in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the economy hemorrhaged more than 700,000 jobs in the month of March. The St. Louis Fed recently predicted that unemployment might hit 32 percent, greater than at the height of the Great Depression. These figures are dire.

We have been seeing buckling infrastructure and rolling blackouts throughout Venezuela for years. The sorry state of Venezuela’s networks is nothing new. But, the new quarantine, and the massive surge in network traffic that comes with it, may finally break Venezuela's internet.