Something I think is deeply underappreciated right now is that, while social distancing has been tremendously effective, that efficacy is going to expire in about two weeks, when anyone infected before will have finished the life cycle of infection. (1/x) https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/there-is-no-plan-for-the-end-of-the-coronavirus-crisis.html

At that point, only a very small number of new cases will arise, pressure on hospital systems will ease, and yet we will still be very, very far from the “other side” of the pandemic, with most of the population still vulnerable to a outrageously infectious disease.

Right now, lockdowns are flattening the curve so that the capacity of our hospitals aren’t breached, or not so dramatically. But in a few weeks all the lockdowns will be achieving is delay.

In many parts of the country, especially those struggling most with covid, curves are flattening already, or even declining, but that isn’t a sign of progress treating the disease, only limiting its spread, for now.

For hospitals even to continue treating patients would require at least some reopening, otherwise their patient load would get pretty quickly pretty close to zero.

Should we continue lockdowns, we would just be waiting around for a deus ex machina of one kind or another—a vaccine or a treatment, presumably. But we wouldn’t be moving towards herd immunity, because the disease would have stalled in its path through the population.

That doesn’t mean we need to open things up immediately, of course—that would be disastrous. It means we need a carefully calibrated and comprehensive plan about where we go, safely, from here.

But if the quite effective status quo will functionally expire in just a few weeks, for what comes after it remains the case that, anywhere you look in every part often he country and at every level of government, there is no plan. (X/x)