1/ Developing the intuition behind "reopen" position. Here are a few things to assimilate into your thinking.
2/ Thought experiment: What if you knew with 100% certainty that no vaccine or therapy would be available in your lifetime? Then, you would need some form of "reopen" as you would not think about isolating yourself from humanity for ever.
3/ Furthermore, more and more functions would need to be done and people would need to go back to work, even "non-essential" occupations.
4/ Another tool to help you think about the "reopen" position - understanding how much risk we already accept when we have a mostly "open" society.
5/ For example, in the 1950s, we were able to have an "open" society at the height of polio, which afflicted 57k people in 1952 according to this source. (ourworldindata.org/polio#all-char…)
6/ Another case: The "Hong Kong" flu epidemic of 1968 - 100k American perished and 1 million globally. Horrible, but shut down was not pursued. cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-r…
7/ Then, we also have forms of risk that have we have come to accept like auto fatalities - currently about 30k/year but peaked at 45k per year. Yet, most people still drove. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_veh…
8/ Finally, people think "reopen" means "do nothing." Not correct. It means "do different." Open society but enforce safety rules like masks and banning mass gatherings. Require businesses to innovate so they can deliver services at low risk.
9/ "Reopen" also means targeting resources - for example, our elderly are at incredibly high risk. So we can subsidize more housing for them so they are not as dense or move them out of crowded facilities. We need more tracing and we can quarantine much more.
10/ Bottom line: "Re open" means we recognize that starting society must come sooner or later, that we already live with notable levels of risk, and that we can do still a lot of to prevent/mitigate the disease through targeted intervention rather than society wide lock downs.
