Can WE REOPEN SAFELY?

California's Governor Newsom seems to be heading
for another stricter lockdown as August approaches.


When lockdown ends there will inevitably be a spike, and we need to have worked hard during lockdown to prepare, like the WCape has. But we can't stay in lockdown forever and we need to save our economy.

Places of worship, hair salons and other businesses are closing again after Gov. Gavin Newsom on  (1)>>Monday rolled back the state's reopening amid an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. Everyone said in April that the second shutdown would be SO much more painful, and it definitely will be. Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested on Monday that the current nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases was due to the United States not shutting down completely in its initial response to the virus. “We did not shut down entirely and that’s the reason why we went up,” said Fauci during a virtual conversation hosted by Stanford Medicine. “We started to come down and then we plateaued at a level that was really quite high, about 20,000 infections a day. Then as we started to reopen, we’re seeing the surges that we’re seeing today as we speak.”We can’t keep moving the goalposts. We can’t say, “It’s just for a couple of weeks.” Then it’s a couple of months. Then it’s until we have “14 straight days of no new cases,” then it’s 28 days. Then it’s “when we have a vaccine.”The testing fiasco was the original sin of America’s pandemic failure, the single flaw that undermined every other countermeasure. If the country could have accurately tracked the spread of the virus, hospitals could have executed their pandemic plans, girding themselves by allocating treatment rooms, ordering extra supplies, tagging in personnel, or assigning specific facilities to deal with COVID-19 cases. None of that happened. Instead, a health-care system that already runs close to full capacity, and that was already challenged by a severe flu season, was suddenly faced with a virus that had been left to spread, untracked, through communities around the country. Overstretched hospitals became overwhelmed. Basic protective equipment, such as masks, gowns, and gloves, began to run out. Beds will soon follow, as will the ventilators that provide oxygen to patients whose lungs are besieged by the virus.  (2)>>When will that be? And what about the next virus? Will we have to stay home for that one too? It’s confusing and deeply unsettling to many. And just as many are becoming very angry. Its never going to end .  California's Twenty-nine counties the state is monitoring are now required to close indoor operations. It's not like we have much choice. Extended lockdowns are not an option economically. Some nation wide  city mayor's have made  statements yesterday that due to the reduced sales taxes coming in they are stating to eliminate police, fire, and many other services provided by theie city. The state I live in was essentially bankrupt before this started,  (3)>>California hit the fan a few months ago ,and many services are being cut.Best to just stay locked down forever instead of putting on the training wheels and learning from mistakes as we go.Oh, I like this page a lot--it's a lot of interesting data to compare in one place. I like that states can clearly move back as well as forward.On the first table, I'd like to see the reopening dates in there as well, since it'll be really interesting to see days since reopening in conjunction with the other numbers. I struggle a little with averages on Table 2. I don't see how Montana could be 120% increasing in the last 14 days with a 30-day graph wherein the second half of the line is pretty flat, and I'm not sure it's worth including Rt with that wide a possible range. Table 3 uses the red/green system for three separate metrics within the table, which I find confusing, but still good info. For table 4, once I figured out there genuinely were two different goals for daily national testing I was good to go but it took me a minute.Overall it's really enlightening and I'd love to see one on countries[ see charts and info at https://www.covidexitstrategy.org/ ] States are trying  to reopen America’s paused, traumatized economy. In the absence of a national roadmap for that transition, governors, regional leaders, and business owners are scrambling. They are downloading general guidance documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They are scouring the world for COVID-19 testing kits. And they’re asking trusted stakeholders what they think about easing coronavirus quarantines. or the first time since this country was formed, the US is BANNED from traveling to most other countries in N. America, Europe and Asia.We are now behaving like some 3rd world hovel incapable of managing a pandemic. The rest of the western world is reopening with testing and tracing and people can return to work or school without having to risk their lives. 
NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>Monday rolled back the state's reopening. It might go through three wave even before we get a vaccine. But we can make subsequent waves less severe by keeping a few things going until then. Things like: mask and glove culture, reduced social gatherings, rapid and regular testing, contact tracing, reduced international travel, continued production of necessary medical equipment, and so on.For example, in the U.S. through the first week of April, there were officially just over 360,000 confirmed cases nationwide. Without lockdowns and other interventions, the researchers at Berkeley calculate that the U.S. would have had nearly 14 times as many by April 6: more than 5 million confirmed cases. To put this in perspective, the U.S. now, two months later, is hitting the 2 million mark.  (2)>>When will that be? And what about the next virus? Why was the world so unprepared? Should countries have higher national stockpiles of ventilators, masks, ICU beds? Should stay-at-home orders have been issued earlier?These are all measures for after an epidemic has begun, after an enterprising virus has leapt from an animal to a human (a phenomenon scientists call “spillover“). But a small group of ecologists, epidemiologists, and veterinarians have spent the last decade attacking pandemics from another angle. One big question is whether the coronavirus is also here to stay. If efforts to contain it fail, there’s a high chance that it will become endemic. As with influenza, this could mean that deaths occur every year as the virus circulates, until a vaccine is developed. If the virus can be spread by people who are infected but don’t have symptoms, it will be more difficult to control its spread, making it more likely that the virus will become endemic. (3)>>California hit the fan a few months ago .   A Few Months ago California Gov. Newsom stressed in his daily briefings that the laockdowns were needed to BEND THE CURVE , this began in March . The Hard lockdowns failed , the state of California is now having serious budget problems .Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly said California will need to see steady declines in coronavirus cases and deaths in order to reopen in earnest. But two months into the state’s shelter-in-place order, coronavirus cases are still rising and deaths remain at a stubborn plateau. In fact, Friday was the state’s second-deadliest day amid the pandemic.One goal of the stay-at-home order was to buy public health officials time to get a handle on the virus, and ultimately suppress it, by figuring out just how much “hidden disease” was out there through increased testing and tracing.