It strikes me as increasingly relevant to know what is going on with covid19 in Mexico and Central America. To what extent are our southern states mimicking their curve?

I appreciate that this is a politically ... fraught inquiry. But nevertheless there is a lot of interchange between the border states and those countries.

Judging from my twitter tl as well as the movement on the DJIA, people are kind of done with Covid-19. That is understandable.

However, I’m struck that we have not had a good public debriefing about the efficacy of the lockdowns, that if this thing returns in the fall we need to know what we think about them, and that the trajectory in AZ TX CA, while local, has national implications.

In my view there are some heavily siloed experts who will not hesitate to push lockdowns very heavily, discounting the dramatic collateral damage. And the rest of us need to decide to agree once more with them.

The vibe seems to be “whew glad that’s over.” But reading the reports of Fauci’s testimony today (I didn’t watch it), I wouldn’t be surprised if in December he said, “Everybody should shelter in place again!”

So we need to think collectively about this some more.

Yikes. I don’t see how you can think about the border states without taking this into account. https://twitter.com/mdfrese/status/1275641246091038722?s=21 https://twitter.com/mdfrese/status/1275641246091038722

And yet I see a fair number of talking heads chalking up the southern situation to the end of lockdowns.

Maybe, maybe not, but the speed with which they revert to defend the lockdowns is a sign of what they’ll suggest this fall.

Personally, my opposition to lockdowns is basically implacable. But regular followers of mine probably knew that already.

My opposition is rooted in personal experience only. But on a more public -minded note, I think we collectively HAVE to ponder what public authorities just made us go through.