Around the US, "essential” workers are going to work every day and doing their jobs, COVID-19 pandemic or not. Factory workers are producing things. Truck and delivery drivers are transporting those things. Grocery store employees and food service workers are making sure food reaches our tables. Congress, not so much.

Half the readers I hear from accuse me of Trump Derangement Syndrome. The other half accuse me of rabid Trump fandom. In truth, I think of US President Donald J Trump in exactly the same way I think of most other politicians: He's usually wrong and often dangerous. But when he's right, he's right. He's right when he says that America needs to "open up" soon. If anything, his target date of Easter is too distant. The longer we wait to get moving again, the longer it will take to recover.

By invoking the Defense Production Act, which "authorizes the President to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders and to allocate materials, services, and facilities to promote the national defense or to maximize domestic energy supplies," US president Donald Trump has declared himself America's economic dictator.

The jury is still out on which of two things — COVID-19 or the panic over COVID-19 — will cost more lives and do more damage to the global economy. My money's still on the latter. In the meantime, I've developed a surefire, Groundhog Day type test for whether the emergency is over: Watch for Nobel laureate economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to start trying to convince us it was, all in all, actually a good thing.