The discussion over social distancing is getting polarized in a dangerous way, and it's going to take a lot of work for people not to lock themselves into absolutist positions here.
There is a dumb way to reopen, but also a desperate need to reopen. There are dumb risks we shouldn't take, but also conversations about acceptable risks we're going to need to have. There are places where easing lockdown would be disastrous, and places where it may be okay.
This is why we should all be enraged the administration has wasted these last few months. If we had truly mobilized the nation around testing and tracing starting eight weeks ago, we could experiment with reopening safely.
This is all obvious, I guess. But the political fight over this is being driven by the most reckless voices, and that's pushing people in extreme directions, and that's going to make an already agonizing set of conversations and policy decisions basically impossible.
To be more helpful, I think there's a ton of good advice for all of us — myself very much included — in this CIDRAP paper on how to communicate in a crisis. cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/…
