Thread by @JeremyKonyndyk

This whole story is a microcosm of the vulnerabilities in US reopening plans.

syracuse.com/coronavirus/20…

Inadequate economic support to workers and businesses forces early reopening.

Voluntary "stay at home if you're sick" guidance doesn't work if parent's livelihoods depend on working outside the home, which in turn depends on child care.

This forces parents to put kids back into daycare.

Inflexible jobs mean sick parents needs to drop off potentially exposed kid rather than quarantine at home.

Testing scarcity and delays mean sick parent doesn't know for sure she has the virus, rolls the dice that she doesn't.

Testing scarcity also means that the daycare has to rely on temp and symptom screening of kids, which offers little real protection.

Slow testing and tracing mean multiple kids and households are exposed before the cluster is discovered and disclosed.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Imagine an alternate reality.

A more gradual reopening, with more economic aid, forces fewer households back to work prematurely.

Policy and resource support to potential cases (expanded family leave, etc) would give parents more ability to quarantine without risking income.

Federal intervention in the testing supply chain would accelerate scale and rapidity of testing.

Robust contact tracing would use rapid testing results to ID and isolate cases and contacts before third and fourth generation transmission.

That approach lengthens but softens the stay-at-home phase, and enables it to be a one-off rather than (as looks increasingly likely) an on-off-on-off approach.

All of these things are policy choices. Most of them would require strong federal leadership and greater support to states and localities. None of this has really been put in place.

And the consequence of reopening businesses, entertainment, child care, and soon potentially schools, before the virus is being sustainably suppressed is that we will net out to more and longer closures in the long run. Much more damaging over time.

This story is also a cautionary tale about what could begin to happen with mass reopening of schools. This is a cluster of 16 cases from a single in-home day care. Could happen just as easily in a classroom, or many classrooms.

No shortcuts to suppressing the virus.