Today I visited my surgeon to have my staples removed and a post-op consultation.
Today is also the first business day since my state moved from lockdown to Code Yellow (or Phase II or whatever). What that means is that all stores and restaurants can open, subject to maximum capacity limits, social distancing, facemarks, group size limits etc.
For a Monday, traffic was about 75% of “normal”. The shopping center and stores I passed had parking lots filled from 50-75%. Restaurants were busy and people were out.
This was far different than just a few weeks ago when there was no traffic during rush hour. Then parking lots were empty, all businesses were closed and it looked like we were living in a world without people.
As much as I despise traffic and am vehemently anti-consumerist, it was uplifting to see people out and about again.
I missed this level of normalcy.
I’ve read all of the warnings of a coming 2nd wave, the danger of opening up too soon and the history of other pandemics.
It’s all frightening. If the news reports (and expert predictions) are accurate, we could be driving ourselves into an unmanageable 2nd wave crisis by opening up society.
On the other hand, I’m not sure what choice we have.
Most of the people I’ve spoken with are ready for the lockdowns to be lifted. None of us want to die. Nor do we want to infect others.
However, we are also seeing that our government response has been a cluster**ck. We’re being fed a constant diet of misinformation, half baked theories, competing political agendas and poorly based reasoning.
What we’ve seen in my state is:
- Nobody I know knows anyone who has been diagnosed with Covid-19.
- Testing and data is haphazardly done, poorly documents and inconsistently reported.
- Many people are working from home but all retail, restaurant and in-person business has ceased except for grocery stores, hardware stores and gas stations.
- Our unemployment system (ranked last out of 50 states) is overwhelmed and still has not processed claims files at the beginning of the lockdown 2 months ago.
Kids are not attending school. Parents are working from home. Gyms, playgrounds, bars, service companies and parks are closed.
The greatest impact is that people are craving in person interactions with other people.
We are lonely.
That’s why we are reopening.
Trump wants the US to reopen so he can declare “victory” and say he saved the economy before the election.
Anti-Trumpers want to use the pandemic (and our Federal government’s mediocre and often chaotic attempts to address it) to vote Trump out of office.
Others, who I assume are financially secure, want the lockdowns to last until there’s a cure. Older people and those in poor health, are afraid – since these are the highest risk people for dying.
Kids, teens and young adults want to be with each other. Like young people everywhere, they are not so worried about risks.
The rest of us are weighing our odds and considering the risks vs. the rewards.
Judging from the traffic today, the scales have tipped in favor of rejoining society vs. hiding out.