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This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about politics.

It's Friday, October 9th.

I'm Dorothy Wicenden, executive editor of The New Yorker. Inevitably, when you get a shock of this nature,

there's going to be a lot of chaos and a lot of human suffering because of it. Back in April,

John Cassidy talked with me about the impact of the COVID pandemic on the economy. At the time, the stock market was in freefall, unemployment was soaring, and Congress had

recently passed a stimulus bill designed to stave off economic disaster. Or as John described

it at the time, the initial phase of economic disaster.

What often happens in an economic catastrophe is you have a first round big economic shock,

and that feeds through the system and everybody starts laying people off, etc.

And then you have a second round, which a financial crisis develops because firms and people all start defaulting on their loans,

and then you get a financial spiral down.

Over the past six months, the stock market has rebounded and unemployment has dropped.

But millions are still out of work, and entire sectors of the economy from restaurants to airlines

...