Part of the disconnect on "opening up" is because some people assume it means "back to normal"—when in fact the activities that fall under "opening up" (at least the ones states are considering and people are arguing about right now) are often in relatively narrow categories.
On the one hand, some (perhaps much) transmission occurs within households, or among people performing essential services. Those things never closed.
On the other hand, some transmission occurs at mass gatherings and other superspreading events. Those aren't opening up (yet).
On the other hand, some transmission occurs at mass gatherings and other superspreading events. Those aren't opening up (yet).
You could maybe divide the remaining activities into two groups: "work + school" and "discretionary, small-scale social activity" (e.g. restaurants, parks, personal care, small household gatherings). Most "opening up" involves only some fraction of these activities resuming...
i.e. many states have plans such as: restaurants and personal care businesses can reopen, but schools stay closed and most businesses continue to encourage (or require) work from home. Parks may have been open all along & bans on small gatherings were hard to enforce all along.
Moreover, within the category of things that are opening up, both polls and initial reporting suggest that many people will stay at home & decline to participate in them, and many of the people that do participate will take precautions, as will most of the businesses themselves.
So if 0 is a strict Wuhan or Italy-style lockdown and 100 is "oblivious pre-COVID life", we are not going from 0 to 100. We were never *at* 0, for one thing; many activities were still allowed under lockdown. So let's say we were at a 25.
Maybe we go from a 25 to 35 or 40 in the "opening up" states...and in the "closed" states, maybe we go from 25 to 30 or 35 anyway because per a variety of data, people are getting fatigued with social distancing and it's hard to stop people from e.g. going to a friend's place.
This is why I'm urging caution about what to expect in the data from states that "open up". It's not that I think opening up is a good idea—I think most states should wait. It's because the scope is narrow enough that it MAY get swamped by other factors because the data is noisy.
