Thread by @JeremyKonyndyk

OK, I'll bite.

Flatten the curve was always just phase 1. It was never the end of the story. It was a pause to buy us time to prepare.

Except - the federal government has been squandering it. So we're stuck in limbo.

Don't blame Fauci et al for this, blame Trump.

https://twitter.com/stoolpresidente/status/1260721488241418240

I get the frustration here. I feel it. Tho I'm fortunate to be able to work from home, I'm still desperate for this to end. I don't know when I'll be able to see my parents, when my kids will see their friends, etc. I'm watching friends' businesses face bankruptcy. It's awful.

But if you feel you've been sold a bait-and-switch, ask first who dangled the bait. Ask who told you it would be easy in the first place.

It wasn't health experts saying "flatten the curve and it'll magically go away."

It was politicians saying that. And one in particular.

I cannot stress enough that this was NEVER the view among public health experts. But many politicians lacked the courage to be up front about how hard and long this fight will be.

And so they have over-promised while under-preparing.

Lockdown is a holding pattern that halts explosive spread and buys you time to build a better way of controlling it.

But YOU HAVE TO MAKE USE OF THE TIME YOU BUY. And the federal government and many states...haven't.

How do we get out of this mess? By building the ability to reopen safely.

What does that look like? A consistent nation-wide ability to detect spread early, test people, trace and quarantine in a targeted way, bolster our hospitals, and protect high-risk groups.

When you have that capacity in place, you don't have to choose between protecting health or protecting the economy. You can do both. Have your cake and eat it too.

That's where we want to be. But we have to build that. And it's an Apollo Program type of effort.

Imagine if the feds had left the Apollo program to the states. Would that have worked?

The delays we're seeing, and the slow progress containing spread, flow from the country fighting with one arm tied behind our back. The states are in the game, the feds are on the sidelines.

So by all means, be mad. Be very very mad. I sure am. I'm furious about this every day.

But that anger is only productive if it's focused on the right problem.

And the problem is NOT the fact that we don't want our grandparents to die. Or that younger people don't want to risk long-term organ damage.

The problem is that we have had two months when the federal government could have been leading, and chose not to.

We have had two months in which the government could have been trying to fix testing, rather than claiming it was already perfect.

Two months in which the feds could have been jump-starting domestic PPE production, but instead were claiming there was plenty of PPE.

Two months in which the government could have been building a national disease surveillance system to detect future flare-ups.

Two months in which the feds could have been organizing and funding a national framework for contact tracing.

The much-maligned experts have been screaming for these things for months. Because this is how we get out of limbo - safely.

Don't blame the people saying that we've got a hard road ahead. Blame the people who said this *wouldn't be* very hard - and then didn't try very hard.

The messaging to the country on this HAS been a mess. But not because expert advice is changing. It's because a lot of political leaders have not talked straight about how hard this will be.

Here's the reality: the economy will remain in the tank until the virus is suppressed - whether or not the stay-at-home orders are lifted. The economy doesn't recover until people feel safe.

And people won't be safe until we have a national test/trace/isolate/protect posture.

So we have to build that capability, and then we have to sustain it. For years, perhaps. Until there is a vaccine.

Sustaining that capability doesn't mean endless lockdown. But it does mean life will remain different. There's no back-to-normal, there's only new normal.

The politicians who are acknowledging this are the ones being straight with you. The ones saying "we're fine here, we're not NYC" are the ones to be wary of.

/end

Actually, one last analogy.

There's a forest fire on the edge of town. You've closed all the businesses and evacuated people. The fire is partly contained but still burning - and there's still a lot of dry kindling. Do you stop fighting it and send everyone back to their homes?