Reopen...

My fear with extending the lockdown is that we are simply prolonging the pain. We need to view the lockdown for what it is: forcibly keeping a lot of vulnerable people and business from making a living. It's an incredible stress on parents, families, workplaces.

So what are we achieving?

Certainly, we are preventing the spread of the virus in the short term. We're saving lives. It's given us some time to gain intelligence about the virus, how it works, some medical strategies for fighting it, best hygiene practices, etc.

And in the long term everyone seems to think there will be a vaccine, but no one knows when. Ok.

We're left with the medium term. We cannot close the economy until the vaccine arrives. Anyone who advocates such an idea is totally clueless.

What is the benefit of waiting another week? Another month? Another 6 months? What can we hope to have in 6 months? More testing? Test and trace? Herd immunity?

Will test and trace work better than simply monitoring for fever and cough?

There seems to be this "wise consensus" that once we reopen we need to stay reopen. Why? Why can't we reopen and then close again if there are signs the hospital system will be overwhelmed. Why is that so bad? Or, should I say, so much worse than alternatives?

Maybe our crazy chaotic country is working just right by testing my hypothesis in Florida.