This is likely to be controversial, but I've been thinking about what an "incentive compatible" long-term lockdown looks like with respect to outdoor public spaces lately. Here are a few thoughts on some trade-offs involved:

1. Closing down outdoor public spaces (beaches, parks, etc.) on the one hand makes it more likely that people stay home but on the other hand makes it harder to sustain a lockdown for a long period of time.

2. The optimal amount of shutting down of outdoor public spaces depends on the elasticity of leaving the house with respect to the shutting down of the public spaces.

3. Over the last few weeks, more and more public spaces seem to be shutting down (at least in the Boston area). Rather than keeping people at home, this seems to have largely resulted in increased density at the few places left open.

4. This suggests that the critical elasticity of leaving the house with respect to the shutting down of public spaces is low.

5. To me, that suggests that the optimal rate of shutting down public spaces is also low, arguing against shutting down public spaces and instead keeping them open.

6. But you can actually do even better than that: There's a TON of unused public space in cities: Roads. The supply of roads vastly exceeds demand under a lockdown. So let's turn them into open public spaces! Because of the low elasticity, this can provide a lot of social benefit

It seems like rather than shutting down more and more public spaces, mayors/governors around the country could actually decrease density of people in public spaces by shutting down a lot of roads

This would allow pedestrians, cyclists, families playing sports (within-family/social cohort only) , etc. to use those roads and more easily maintain social distance.

To be clear, I don't think this applies to indoor public or private spaces, where density is not a function of how many places are open. Instead, just outdoor public spaces, where density is much more related to how many places are open.