Maybe Reopening Willy Nilly Was A Bad Idea? Who Could Have Guessed?

As Chris Cilliza noted for CNN, Señor Trumpanzee has been suggesting the coronavirus is under control for 156 days now, starting with an interview on January 22 in Davos when he said "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine." It was wrong then and was still wrong on Tuesday when he told Republican students packed into a Phoenix church with no masks that "It's going away." It isn't-- at least not soon enough to save his victims in that church. "In the interim," wrote Cillizza, "2.4 million Americans have tested positive for coronavirus and more than 121,000 have died. And just Wednesday, the three most populous states in the country-- California, Florida and Texas-- reported record numbers of daily coronavirus cases... Never has the gap between Trump's fanciful rhetoric been wider nor more dangerous. While Trump has always lived in an alternate reality in which he is winning, winning always winning, the stakes have typically been lower. Now, with coronavirus surging, Trump's desire to see a world that facts make clear doesn't exist is endangering lives in a very real way. And as the coronavirus numbers continue to pile up, Trump's insistence that it's all over (or will be over soon) seems more and more discordant. And, unfortunately, more frequent."

Want to get a nose job? Forget about Houston, Dallas, San Antonio or Austin. Trumpist Governor Greg Abbott has decreed no elective surgeries allowed in Bexar, Dallas, Harris, and Travis counties to preserve beds for coronavirus patients. Sarah Champagne, reporting for the Texas Tribune, wrote than on Thursday morning Abbott announced that he will pause any further phases of reopening Texas although he's doing nothing "to reverse any of the reopening phases he's already allowed for-- meaning that bars, restaurants, malls, bowling alleys and other businesses are still allowed to remain open with some capacity limitations. 'The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses, ' he wrote in a press release on Thursday, but the 'pause will help our state corral the spread.'" Probably not nearly as much as it would have had he mandated and enforced something as simple as mask-wearing in public. But he didn't-- and won't.

Just Tuesday, Abbott stressed that hospital capacity in Texas was “abundant.” A day later, Abbott acknowledged in a TV interview that capacity issues in some parts of the state "may necessitate a localized strategy" instead of a return to statewide action.

Statewide, the number of hospitalizations has reached record highs for a full two weeks, soaring to 4,739 on Thursday morning and tripling since Memorial Day. On Wednesday, there were 1,320 intensive care unit beds and nearly 13,000 available hospital beds, but with regional disparities.

In hard-hit regions, some hospitals have begun moving coronavirus patients from crowded ICUs to other facilities and local leaders have warned that hospitals could get overwhelmed if the number of infections keeps climbing. In the greater Houston area, the Texas Medical Center warns that the intensive care units are 30 beds away from filling up to their normal capacity. Hospitals and care facilities would then employ their surge plans to build out additional capacity.

Some hospital leaders had also pointed out that treating both patients could become unsustainable: “Should the number of new cases grow too rapidly, it will eventually challenge our ability to treat both COVID-19 and non-COVID 19 patients,” Dr. Marc Boom, head of the Houston Methodist hospital system, wrote in an email Friday.

...Laredo's hospitals are also reported to be hitting their ICU capcity. The Laredo TV station KGNS reported Wednesday night that Dr. Victor Treviño, the health authority, has contacted the Commissioner of Texas Department of State Health Services, to fast track the diversion of COVID-19 patients to other hospitals.

Covering this on a national basis for the NY Times, Jack Healy, Mitch Smith and Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, noted that Americans are facing a new halted reopenings and a sense of limbo, a payment for botching the first spike of the pandemic. "Soaring cases of the coronavirus," they wrote, "are forcing cities and states across the country to halt plans to restart their economies and even reimpose earlier limits on public life, increasing worries that premature reopenings could lead to a second round of closures. In Texas, which reported a record high of more than 5,000 new cases on Tuesday, the governor told local officials they could restrict outdoor gatherings to 100 people and urged residents to stay home. Maine officials called off plans to allow bars to resume serving drinks inside on July 1. The governor of Kansas said rising cases showed that the state was 'not ready' to continue easing restrictions. And in parts of central Idaho, where coronavirus cases have exploded in recent weeks, bars are shutting down and gatherings of more than 50 people are again outlawed.

With the number of new daily cases now rising in more than half of the United States, the debate over whether to reimpose restrictions or push ahead with reopening is creating divides between neighboring cities and states that mirror the scattershot responses that emerged as the country went into lockdown this year.

“There’s very little appetite among the American public to go backwards,” said Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “As reopenings started there were no plans for what would constitute a red flag to close things down. People just said, ‘We’re reopening, everything’s fine, let’s move ahead.’”

Face To Face by Nancy Ohanian

Will Americans start feeling that appetite when the numbers go from 34,000 new cases a day to 100,000? How about when the deaths go from 125,000 to 500,000? No? Will they feel the appetite when they start losing close friends and relatives? Many Americans have a problem thinking abstractly. But they understand what it means when mama or grandpa dies. Or when virtually the whole Clemson football team goes down because 23 players contracted COVID. Kansas State too. At Louisiana State football 30 player are in quarantine. "But public health experts who supported the original shutdowns now worry that governments will not be able to constrain the resurgent coronavirus with a blizzard of shifting restrictions that can change the moment a person crosses a city limit or state line," wrote the Times team. "Hundreds of city, county and state governments have created their own reopening plans, each with different 'phases' of economic reopening and each with their rules for how many people can gather at a party, what portion of a restaurant’s tables can be full and when people must wear masks. The results can be a baffling patchwork, and one that residents are left to navigate on their own. Much of the new tension over the safety of reopening is playing out in the West and South, where the numbers are getting worse, and has split along partisan lines.

The governors of Louisiana and Oregon, both Democrats, recently paused their plans to ease restrictions on businesses and public life, saying it was not yet safe to more fully reopen. And on Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington ordered most people to wear face coverings in public.

“It is clear that Covid is alive and well in Louisiana, and as we see more people testing positive and admitted to hospitals, we simply are not ready to move to the next phase,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said, noting that about 90 percent of new cases were coming from spread in the community, not within nursing homes or other group living facilities.

But Republican governors in Florida, Arizona, Texas and other states grappling with rising daily case levels have resisted the prospect of locking down again.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has declined to require Texans to wear masks and said that locking down the state again would be a last resort. But on Tuesday he urged residents to stay home in an interview with the television station KBTX.

“Because the spread is so rampant right now, there is never a reason for you to have to leave your home unless you do need to go out,” he said. “The safest place for you is at your home.”

In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, said he had “no plans to shut down Utah’s economy” after the state’s epidemiologist warned that the “only viable option to manage spread and deaths will be a complete shutdown” and urged the governor to reimpose tougher limits on public life.

Shelby County, Tenn., which includes Memphis, was poised to ease its coronavirus restrictions to “phase three” last week, allowing businesses to operate at 75 percent of their normal capacity, but county leaders reconsidered as the number of active cases grew to more than 2,000. Since the start of the pandemic, about 8,000 people have been infected across the county, and 165 have died.

“We ramped up to reopen too quick,” said Tami Sawyer, a county commissioner who has urged the county to impose even tighter limitations. “We weren’t ready.”

With guidance from governments hard to pin down, the burden of deciding whether to stay open or shut down again in the face of a positive coronavirus test is falling on individual businesses.

Restaurants, electronics retailers, salons and bakeries across the country have been reopening only to shut down weeks later after workers or customers report illnesses-- a pattern that business owners fear will repeat itself for months until there is a vaccine or treatment for Covid-19.

In Arizona, Gila River Hotels & Casinos announced on Thursday that three reopened casinos would close again for two weeks because of rising coronavirus cases in the state.

...But even as health officials imposed new restrictions on bars and nightclubs in Boise, conservative state legislators met on Tuesday to rail against what they called an infringement of freedoms because of the pandemic limits. Idaho reported 242 new coronavirus cases on Monday, its highest single-day tally, according to a New York Times database.

“What we’re seeing now is the effects of our earlier phases of reopening,” said Ben Ridenhour, a bio-mathematician and assistant professor at the University of Idaho who has modeled the virus’s course through the state. “It’s a little bit scary. The models are showing things are going to be getting worse unless we do something to rectify the situation.”

COVID doesn't pay attention to politics-- although it does hunt down people walking around without masks. No one picked this to happen and no one predicted the societal side-effects. The coronavirus calls the shots, not us. That's what I keep telling my friends when they ask when we're going to re-book our trip to the Dordogne region of France. Besides... does the virus like caves or hate caves? I'll have to check, but it's moot now because the EU countries are wisely excluding Americans from entering their countries.