Back in mid to late February when I started closely following Covid19 news and talking to epidemiologists and public health experts, I quickly noticed a huge gap between their level of alarm and the level of alarm among the public and policy makers.

Eventually those two things converged, as the danger of the virus became impossible to ignore, but I fear that something similar is re-emerging in the way the public conversation about "opening back up" is starting to take shape.

You're hearing increasingly loud voices talking about how we've locked down and are going to get it under control and then we can open back up. But there's literally no plan for that right now. "Opening back up" just means another set of outbreaks.

Meanwhile the actual experts keep saying loudly, repeatedly that "back to normal" simply isn't happening until there's a vaccine. That "opening back up" can only happen with a comprehensive testing and contact tracing plan and even then semi-permanent alterations to daily life.

I *deeply* understand why basically everyone just wants this to be over and to get on with our lives, but I fear there's a lot of magical thinking now creeping in that reminds me of the magical thinking that got us here in the first place.