If you thought the first pandemic-induced lockdown was painful, wait until you see the second one.

After two months in a freezer, the D.C. area’s economy had just begun to thaw when George Floyd died in Minneapolis. The medical examiner’s office in the county has ruled his death a homicide. The dayslong mass protests that have followed — combined with already loosened stay-at-home orders across the region — will almost certainly spread the coronavirus.

If infections spiral out of control and governments are forced to reimpose strict social distancing, the consequences could be worse than they were the first time around.

That’s because it’s unclear whether federal aid will be as robust as it was at the onset of the pandemic, says Georgetown University professor Harry Holzer, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor.

“I think we’ll be spending much, much less on relief for a second shutdown than we did for a first shutdown,” Holzer says. “That means people are going to be hurting [more] than they were, and any recovery will be much weaker than it otherwise would have been.”

“Households and businesses are willing to do things as long as there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” says economist Jeannette Chapman. “When there’s a second shutdown, the psychological effect will be larger.”

Congress had an atypically bipartisan response to the emergency as it unfolded in March, Holzer says, approving trillions of dollars in aid despite ideological squabbles over expanded unemployment benefits.

That assistance has softened the blow of what’s already the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. But while the Democrat-controlled House recently approved another massive aid bill, Senate Republicans have pumped the brakes, with some expressing disdain for states and workers calling for more help.

This is a particularly big problem for the District of Columbia, which has already received $750 million less in federal assistance than expected because Senate Republicans took the unusual step of classifying the nation’s capital as a territory in a March bailout package. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser excoriated that decision, calling it “unconscionable.”

The city can’t fully recover from the crisis without additional aid, says D.C. CFO Jeffrey DeWitt — especially not if a second shutdown is in order. Closing the city again could cost the District as much as $300 million, he says, in addition to the $700 million hole the health crisis is already expected to create.

“That fair share of federal funding is what we need to use to help businesses get back on their feet,” DeWitt says.

Virginia Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne is reluctant to estimate how much a second shutdown would cost the commonwealth — doing so would be like “putting [one’s] finger in the wind,” he says — but the finance chief believes the damage would be severe and long-lasting, and not only for the state budget.

“From a confidence standpoint, [another lockdown] would be even more detrimental to the public. It would just make them even more uncomfortable,” Layne says.

That prediction is echoed by Jeannette Chapman, director of the Stephen S. Fuller Institute at George Mason University, which has been closely tracking the economic impact of the health crisis. The region’s economy is already hurtling toward a contraction due to the virus, Chapman says. A resurgence of COVID-19 cases could intensify uncertainty, further discouraging consumer spending.

“Households and businesses are willing and able to do things as long as there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” Chapman says. “When there’s a second shutdown, the psychological effect will be larger and households and businesses will become more conservative with their spending than they were the first time, [because] it will look like a near-never-ending cycle of shutdowns.”

That is the outcome that local and state leaders desperately want to avoid, but they have limited control, especially as the killing of George Floyd continues to fuel protests. Officials have already expressed concerns that the demonstrations will cause a spike in infections, but they have little choice but to wait and see.

In the meantime, Layne says he’s encouraged by the moderate progress Virginia has made in controlling the spread of COVID-19, and he believes the state will be better equipped to handle a second outbreak, if there is one. But he stresses the urgent need for additional federal aid if the commonwealth — and its neighbors — continue to suffer from record-high unemployment and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Virginia estimates the health emergency will leave a $1 billion hole in the state budget; in April, Maryland had projected losses of nearly $3 billion this fiscal year, but the latest estimates appear more optimistic.

“I think Congress will do what’s right. It would be much less expensive to do that than to let this economic collapse go further,” Layne says. “And what’s the use of having all these financial resources if you don’t use them to help the citizens in a time when they need them?”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.