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Stock markets rose with protests and riots because protests and riots proved that our Covid fears are irrational — that no invisible membrane separates us from going outside and taking small risks for things we care about. It’s funny: fear is so clearly political, risk so subjective, so in the eye of the beholder. We take risks — we participate in the economy — when there are things that feel like they matter to us; the economy collapsed not simply because Covid collapsed it, but because we didn’t really feel like risking our lives to continue to live. Statistically speaking, only a subset of society had something to really fear from Covid… and yet… all of society shut down.
