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There is not one situation template for America. You have hot spots, like NYC, requiring great government intervention (hospital ships, National Guard assembling field hospitals) and great sacrifices by residents and local businesses. And you have places like Andrews, TX, with no cases. Shutting down things in Andrews makes as much sense as not shutting down in NYC.
I would like to see our National US leaders lay out a return to normalcy plan like this, marked by measurable standards rather than polls and feel-good deadlines:
1. Testing must be nationally available on demand. Nothing reopens until this milestone is passed.
2. The federal government must have a process to keep quarantined workers “while” financially. We can’t have financial stresses driving people to break quarantine.
3. A county may return to normalcy if it can demonstrate that new cases are not increasing, it has hospital capacity for twice the current case, it has a government managed entity for driving testing to all contacts of new cases, and a support system for all cases hospitalized or quarantined at home.
Clearly, different regions will return at different rates. This can serve as an incentive to counties and towns to make quick progress on support issues. Second, such a system would require regions with no cases to take measures to monitor and prepare for cases.
A look at cases across the US map shows the 20-80 rule applies: 20% of the country is providing 80% of the cases. We should use that to our advantage.
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