THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN OF COVID-19
THE CORONAVIRUS HAS broken everyone’s windows, and the glazier cannot leave his house to fix them.
In his classic essay, “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen,” Frédéric Bastiat describes a pane of glass smashed by a shopkeeper’s careless son. He imagines a crowd gathered around. “It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live,” the gawkers mutter comfortingly, “and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?”
Bastiat’s great contribution to popular economics was to succinctly and memorably ask his readers to look beyond the obvious, or seen, economic activity—the reglazing of the broken window—and consider also what has been foregone, the unseen. “As our shopkeeper
