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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

This week I went to a gym that just recently opened up. While attendance was way down (I'd say ~1/3 of usual) there were still a good amount of people there, and I was the only person, besides staff, wearing a mask.

At this point I see another explosion of coronavirus cases as just math. I mean, it's like stamping out most of a fire so you're left with only a few burning embers, so you say "Great, time to reopen, lets dump these giant bags of dry leaves onto these embers."

Yes, many (most?) people are still staying home where I live, but for many places that have opened up I see zero change in behavior - there were some viral videos last weekend of packed bars and events. I contrast that with other places (like Germany) that actually appear to have a plan in place of how they will be able to open up safely. AFAICT our plan in the US appears to be "thoughts and prayers".

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No, sorry, states that never locked down (WY, SD, AR, etc) have followed the same curve as those that did lock down. States that re-opened early (GA, FL, TX) have not seen a huge spike in cases. Vast majority of deaths were caused by nursing home incidents. Almost half the deaths are in three states (NY, NJ, and MA), which have had strict lockdown procedures. The curve was flattened back in April. There is no objective criteria being used to justify masks or lockdowns. There has been no threshold set where once hospital usage is below a certain amount, all restrictions are set. For this reason, I cannot support arbitrary lockdowns. They are violations of liberty and an abuse of state of emergency policy. In the meantime, 40 million people are unemployed, our economy is in tatters and it's going to take a decade to recover.

Nearly every law is a violation of liberties, I don't think that's a good argument.

Any thoughts on any of the other mentioned points against the lockdowns?

Nope, I don't necessarily disagree with OP's overall conclusion. I just thought that one point wasn't very good.

While that is true a 'right to work' is recognised in the International Charter of Human Rights as one of the big ones. Along with free movement and probably there is an implicit if not explicit right not to be mandatorialy isolated from other people.

These aren't "I want a house with 3 stories and I can only build two" style liberties. These are the "if I don't have these I literally do not have any liberty" incursions on liberties. The important ones.

Wyoming and South Dakota never locked down, and had the same infection curve as New York and California, which did? That sounds like a great argument in favor of lockdowns. To a virus, here is a strategy which turns Times Square into the Great Plains. That's amazing.

New York has 1,529 deaths per million population, California has 105, Wyoming has 26, and South Dakota has 67 (using the Worldometer numbers). So they certainly didn't follow the same curves, nor did the lockdown turn Times Square into the Great Plains.

On average, stricter measures seem correlated with higher mortality, not lower. That doesn't mean the measures kill people, just that governments don't tend to impose them until stuff gets bad. It's very difficult to disentangle the effects of the intervention from the effects of the pre-existing environment.

Viruses spread due to close contact so these stats need to be normalized for population density. The relevant number is deaths per million people per person per sq mile. New York state's population density is ~400 people per square mile, California ~250, South Dakota ~11, Wyoming ~6. So California's deaths per million are four times Wyoming's and less than twice of South Dakotas despite having ~40 and ~24 times the population density, respectively. New York is an anomaly because of New York City (~26,000 people per sq mile) and specifically Manhattan (~67,000 people per sq mile) - an order of magnitude more densely populated than the most densely populated cities in Wyoming (Jackson, ~3300 people per square mile) and South Dakota (Piedmont, ~3000 people per square mile or Sioux Falls with ~2000). The big states have several dense cities with populations larger than both Wyoming and South Dakota combined.

It's also disingenuous to include New York because it was the initial epicenter on the Western hemisphere and the majority of those dead were infected before complete lock down procedures could be implemented or from unavoidable close contact with family or building tenants.

Except that Japan has high population density, no significant lockdown, contact tracing that misses ~80% of the cases (estimating the total case count from their death count, using the IFR from serology elsewhere), and 7 deaths per million. So maybe it's the masks? The general culture of hygiene? The weather? Something else?

There's a lot we don't know here. I wish people would admit and accept that, instead of looking for false confidence, finding it, and then arguing with people who found a different falsely confident answer.

> Except that Japan has high population density, no significant lockdown, contact tracing that misses ~80% of the cases (estimating the total case count from their death count, using the IFR from serology elsewhere), and 7 deaths per million. So maybe it's the masks? The general culture of hygiene? The weather? Something else?

According to Worldometer Japan has tested ~284k people while New York and California have combined tested almost four million despite together having half the population of Japan. Last time I saw excess mortality statistics a few weeks ago they were lagging with several prefectures missing and bad normalization for aging and other factors.

Assuming the numbers are accurate, I'm more interested in how South Dakota and Wyoming are doing so much worse than Japan with such a low population density. I suspect the answer lies in the crumbling rural health infrastructure.

> There's a lot we don't know here. I wish people would admit and accept that, instead of turning this into yet another polarized political debate.

Mortality, population density, and basic division are not political and if by themselves they're polarizing, then we're too far gone already.

I'm not sure what you intend by those test counts? Japan has 874 dead. Assuming IFR of 1%, that implies about 87k infected. But they report 17k confirmed cases, so they're missing ~80% of the cases. I mentioned this to head off any suggestion that Japan's trace and test operation was responsible for their success, since at best it's decreasing R by that ~20%. Perhaps Japan is failing to catch some deaths too; but they're an open society with freedom of speech, so I don't expect their numbers to be grossly wrong.

So what could South Dakota and Wyoming's public health system be doing that's worse than Japan? I don't know the answer, but it's not clear to me at all that the difference is in their government responses vs. some aspect of their initial situations.

I gave deaths per capita because that's the probability that someone in that state will have died of coronavirus, which is what most people care about directly. Your (deaths/people)/(people/area) has no corresponding direct significance. To then call that "the relevant number" overstates the importance of population density, and also models population density badly when it's non-uniform (as you note for NYC). I agree that population density is an important factor, just not as determinative as your post would seem to imply.

Oh, and looks like you quoted my post before I edited it, sorry. But I believe false confidence is polarizing and would like to see less of it, as uncomfortable as the true uncertainty may be.

> I'm not sure what you intend by those test counts? Japan has 874 dead.

I'm saying I believe their numbers are inaccurate because they're undertesting and stats I could use to validate them (overall number of deaths to calculate seasonal excess mortality) are also currently inaccurate for unrelated reasons. I agree that the number of deaths will be impossible to hide in an open society like Japan but for bureaucratic reasons it will take a while to compile and validate those stats before normalizing them enough to compare between years let alone nations. Until then, I'm not convinced and any argument based on Japan as an example is also suspect.

> To then call that "the relevant number" overstates the importance of population density, and also models population density badly when it's non-uniform (as you note for NYC).

Uhm, what? Deaths per million lumps Wyoming in with New York City, making it even less accurate to what people care about. Manhattan will not be reopening on the same schedule as some town on the outskirts of Fargo. Someone in the middle of a dense city does not face the same risk as someone whose closest neighbor is 2 miles away. Also, it's a virus. There's almost a century of medicine and public health expertise that shows that all things being equal, density is the dominant factor.

I thought ending quarantine is what people cared about. Your false confidence about Japan's comparability to the US is not helping. Population density is why NYC and Wyoming aren't comparable yet you're trying to compare another country.

So what do you think explains the difference between Japan and NY? It's not population density. Even if Japan's death count is understated, there is zero chance that all of Japan's medical staff and press have somehow failed to notice and report NYC-level mortality.

And I'm not sure what you think is my "false confidence about Japan's comparability to the US"? I certainly don't believe Japan's response would work equally well in NY, considering that NY applied stricter measures and ended up with 200x the death rate. I believe the susceptibility of individual regions to the coronavirus varies greatly with factors we don't yet understand, including population density, cultural and behavioral factors, weather, maybe air pollution, maybe genetics. I'd guess these factors explain much more of the variation in mortality by region than variation in the governments' responses, though I'm not sure.

And you're missing my point about deaths per capita. That's an intrinsically meaningful number, because people care about the probability that they die (or get seriously sick, etc.). Other numbers are valuable only to the extent they predict something people intrinsically care about. Population density is one such input to the prediction, but it's clearly not the only factor, and your simplistic focus on that isn't useful.

> So what do you think explains the difference between Japan and NY?

There are a thousand factors but my bet is that Japan experienced SARS firsthand and just like South Korea or Vietnam, they learned their lesson. It became the epidemic case study for public health officials and doctors in the entire region (and Canada). Regulators went out of their way to make reporting easy and doctors were all trained to look for and treat viral respiratory diseases early. Wearing masks went from being an oddity to wide spread cultural acceptance. For those reasons, you can't compare the effectiveness of measures in California to those in Wyoming using Japan as a measuring stick.

There are far more differences between Japan and California than there are between California and Wyoming. The latter share their language, the majority of their healthcare regulations, political differences, the CDC, and so on. Right now, traveling from Japan to Wyoming is practically impossible but traveling from California to Wyoming is a medium length road trip or one hop in a a tiny plane with zero enforceable travel restrictions.

> Even if Japan's death count is understated, there is zero chance that all of Japan's medical staff and press have somehow failed to notice and report NYC-level mortality.

I'm not an expert on Japanese culture but I've got enough first hand experience to know that is a failure of imagination and the definition of false confidence. Read about Tepco, the Japanese nuclear regulators, and the series of unfortunate events that led to Fukushima containment failures. It was a systemic failure that shares many parallels to Japans's coronavirus response.

> And I'm not sure what you think is my "false confidence about Japan's comparability to the US"? I certainly don't believe Japan's response would work equally well in NY, considering that NY applied stricter measures and ended up with 200x the death rate.

You (imo) falsely believe that Japan's death rate is accurate (let's wait a few months for accurate general morality). You also falsely believe that their death rate can be used to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of measures in the United States. I'm not sure about the former but certain about the latter. New York had "stricter" measures based on cultural expectations that were practically cultural norms in Japan. There is simply no baseline or control group possible between the two demographics.

> I'd guess these factors explain much more of the variation in mortality by region than variation in the governments' responses, though I'm not sure.

There is less variation within nations than there is between them. That's why they became nations instead of going to war amongst themselves (modulo some geopolitics that apply to the Middle East and the Balkans, not Japan).

> And you're missing my point about deaths per capita. That's an intrinsically meaningful number, because people care about the probability that they die (or get seriously sick, etc.). Other numbers are valuable only to the extent they predict that. Population density is one input, but it's clearly not the only factor, and your simplistic focus on that isn't useful.

People care about ending the quarantine. The quarantine will end based on public health policy. Public health decision makers aren't basing their decision on deaths per capita, they're basing them on localized deaths per capita, which depends on the density in each city, metropolis, and states.

I honestly don't even know what point you're trying to make. Are we trying to end the quarantine or are you trying to make some ideological point?

Sorry, are you claiming that Japan might have experienced NY-level mortality but not noticed? Did you see pictures from NYC's hospitals? You can't not notice that. I'm not confident of much, but I'm very, very confident that coronavirus mortality in Japan has been dramatically lower than NY. If you disagree, then we're not in the same consensus reality, and there's no point in discussing further.

So I'm asking why they're different. You make a lot of statements, most of which are true but which don't specifically explain that difference. For example, you state that Japan's doctors have experience with SARS, and they do; but how is that helping stop the spread? What are they doing that Americans should copy? It's not the contact tracing, except for that ~20% reduction in R at best--and if deaths are undercounted, then they're missing an even greater share of the infections.

And then you seem to say that Japan and NY can't be compared anyways because they're so different? I agree they're different in many ways; so why not think about all those factors, and what we can learn from them? Would a heavy public campaign training people to correctly use masks (and enforcing their use) have brought us to Japan-level mortality with a Japan-level lockdown? Imagine the lives (and jobs, and hours of children's education) that could have been saved if yes. I agree that Japan has very different cultural norms, and those might explain much of the difference. So what are those norms, and how can we adopt them?

Or maybe the dominant factor is neither masks nor lockdowns but weather, and there's nothing in our response that could have helped? Maybe it's something about our speaking habits, and language really does directly make a big difference? That last one is deliberately outlandish, but I'm not even totally sure it's false.

The point I'm trying to make is that we know very little about this disease, and what we do know is confusing and contradictory. Unfortunately, most people seem to have latched onto preferred simple explanations, disregarding the evidence that doesn't support them. Given the earliness of our knowledge here, I believe that's likely to cause important opportunities to control the disease to be missed, and therefore harmful.

> except for that ~20% reduction in R at best

And following up to note the above is wrong--assuming heterogeneous spread (most patients infect no one, but a few super-spreaders infect many), contact tracers will naturally find those super-spreaders disproportionately, with disproportionate benefit. I still doubt that's the dominant difference, though.

> It's also disingenuous to include New York because it was the initial epicenter on the Western hemisphere

No, it wasn't, Seattle was.

In this context the epicenter is where something is most intense, not where it starts. New York City and Seattle peaked roughly around the same but NYC was seeing ~10,000 new cases a day at one point whereas King County was seeing 600 a day at most. Maybe if you normalize for population size and density it's comparable but epicenter is colloquialism that usually implies absolute numbers.

The context is important because most people have heard the word "epicenter" from earthquake stories, where the epicenter is usually singular and never migrates, thus strongly correlated in people's heads as the "start" of a major event.

> the epicenter

The post I responded to specifically said initial epicenter. The post claimed that it was "disingenuous" to include NYC in statistics because, since they were the "initial epicenter", they basically didn't have any warning. Since NYC was not the "initial epicenter", this claim is false; they did have warning and it is perfectly fair to include them in statistics.

What role do you think population density plays in the spread of communicable diseases?

New York was pretty simple, the lockdown started late, when community spread had already started. At one point nearly 800 people a day were dying.

New York saw the curve decline start consistently in the beginning of May. Metrics are defined for reopening and that is in progress.

Armchair quarterbacks get the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but at the time the scope wasn’t understood and officials were worried about the impact of shutting down school breakfast/lunch programs, etc.

Places like South Dakota and Wyoming are lucky, there’s less people in those states than in my upstate NY county, and they aren’t big travel hubs. No surprise there. With other places, you should hold judgement until time has passed, the data is pretty awful in places like Florida. With political factors involved, you won’t know impacts until you have good vital record data re deaths.

The liberty argument is bunk, protecting the general welfare of the people is a core tenet of US governance. We were headed to a recession already and may be heading to a depression, but the rationale behind the lockdowns was the preserve life, and it worked.

New York sent Covid-infected patients into nursing homes, which massively inflated their death toll by subjecting the most vulnerable demographic to the disease. There’s a reason they account for 10-20% of the death toll.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-sent-recovering-corona...

I would say I've almost felt a degree of peer pressure to not stay home after the stay at home order lifts here. Even though I really am not comfortable with the measures everyone has taken here.

I agree I think a second wave is imminent.

I’d love to hear your argument for doing anything other than opening up back to normal (not the new normal) while the elderly and at risk continue staying at home (in addition to anyone that feels more comfortable staying home).

How do you propose to go back to "normal" because of your own "(in addition to anyone that feels more comfortable staying home)."

It would get worse, there, too, if people did return to normal and cases spiked. Versus cities that are now in "new normal" and still full of people being much more cautious.

If cases didn't spike - there are those who believe the flattening of case rates isn't a result of behavioral changes but was some hidden factor - then "the new normal" will continue, but you won't be back to the old one.

If cases do spike, "the new normal" will get even less close to the old normal, because more and more people will self-select back into staying home.

Otherwise you have to get a way more coherent government plan to get on top of the spread. Like tracking and finding and isolating cases fast. And doing more to protect the people in essential jobs which are conducive for big outbreaks.

My wife and I planned to ride the local rails-to-trail bike path today. We pulled up to the main lot and even the overflow parking was full. Tried the entry point 5 miles up trail and it was just as packed. At that point, we decided to head home.

Technically, reopening phase 1 doesn't begin until Monday here.

The lockdown orders imposed on many beaches and parks were totally counterproductive because people ended up more concentrated in the few recreational areas that remained open. At least they're getting some exercise.

I share your sentiment. I recently noticed that many people in my area are returning to pre-pandemic behaviors; especially teenagers and young adults.

I pointed out to my kids that sometimes you can, and sometimes you can't, estimate how dangerous a behavior is based on whether or not lots of people are doing it. Especially where there's a delay between the behavior and observable consequences. E.g., smoking cigarettes in the 1930's, or unprotected promiscuous sex in the 1980's, or (I'm guessing) pre-pandemic behaviors right now.

the first wave never ended. we did almost nothing to actually stop it and have instead just rode it. now, it's going to keep going or even pickup speed.

imagine if a terrorist attack killed over 100,000 people in just a couple of months. instead, we're just like "wasn't so bad" after doing hardly anything.

it's an embarrassment in the u.s. to see people in south korea and china returning back to life as almost normal without danger. and the numbers are incredibly damning to the u.s.

Imagine treating a virus the same way as a terrorist attack. Stop pretending that governments can regulate viruses out of existence, or that armies and lockdowns are going to prevent microscopic, nanometer-sized viruses from traveling in the air. This is beyond asinine.

By the way, SK just kicked the can down the road, they are continuing to get spikes because they have no herd immunity: "Coronavirus: South Korea closes schools again after biggest spike in weeks" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52845015

> Imagine treating a virus the same way as a terrorist attack.

i didn't. i said imagine the situation. i'm saying that people would pay attention and treat it seriously.

> Stop pretending that governments can regulate viruses out of existence

isn't that exactly what south korea did?

the point is that there is no excusing the u.s. response to the virus.

> By the way, SK just kicked the can down the road, they are continuing to get spikes because they have no herd immunity

point me to scientific evidence of herd immunity. or any evidence they've kicked the can down the road. look at their graphs and compare them to the u.s. how in the world is their response kicking the can down the road but the u.s.' isn't? that quite literally makes no sense.

I pointed to an article from today, where SK tried to re-open their schools and immediately shut them down again thanks to another outbreak. They have nothing under control. Their population is still vulnerable and has no antibodies. The U.S. did not have a monolithic response. Many states never shut down, and never experienced overrun hospitals. Many states had light restrictions and never experienced overrun hospitals. Some states sent sick people to nursing homes and then had overrun hospitals.

> The U.S. did not have a monolithic response. Many states never shut down, and never experienced overrun hospitals.

You act as if the pandemic is over; the places that never shutdown or had light restrictions largely were hit later and, though they are behind, also haven't flattened the curve (and, many of the places that reopened early and rapidly, rather than gradually, are also seeing rebounds already.) They may not have yet seen overwhelmed hospitals, but a number of places in both of those groups that didn't before are nearing that point now.

that article says nothing about herd immunity.

> They have nothing under control

i think you have a vastly different definition of "under control" than i do.

> Their population is still vulnerable and has no antibodies.

again, do you have scientific evidence that backs such a claim up? i'm not claiming it doesn't exist, but it'd be nice if people making implications based upon such claims provide evidence for them.

> The U.S. did not have a monolithic response. Many states never shut down, and never experienced overrun hospitals. Many states had light restrictions and never experienced overrun hospitals. Some states sent sick people to nursing homes and then had overrun hospitals

what is your point, exactly?

Not the OP, but "not enough antibodies" is a crystal clear case: once antibodies get above HIT percentage, the epidemic dies out very quickly.

In general, a contagious virus, like COVID-19, can be stopped in only one of three ways:

(1) by acquiring herd immunity, which for most viruses requires exposure of 30-95% of the population (check HIT values for various diseases in wikipedia; initial COVID estimates are somewhere in 29-80%). Neither SK nor China is there yet. Even Sweden or Belarus are not there yet. Even Africa is unlikely to be there yet.

(2) by completely stamping it out (with aggressive decontamination, quarantines, etc.). Again, neither SK nor China is there (this is obvious, they do not even claim it; see school re-closing in SK, Jilin flare up in China, etc.)

(3) by vaccination. Again, no vaccinations in SK, China or anywhere for this matter.

So coronavirus is not "under control" anywhere. We might just accept that and focus on some other things that would be just as nice to get under control: heart disease, cancer, opioid addiction, etc. Just my 2c.

To be fair, you listed the requirements to "stop" an infectious disease, but then claimed them not being met meant it wasn't "under control". Those are two different things. The disease can be "under control" with the caveat that it only remains so as long as we continue to take certain precautions. Once it's "stopped", those precautions aren't really necessary.

Agreed. I assumed a particular interpretation of "under control" which could have been different from what the poster meant.

New Zealand appears to have achieved (2).

Best of luck to it (no irony!). That said, it might not hold. Stamping out the virus (2) requires keeping a perimeter around all existing carriers. New Zealand, being naturally removed from other countries, has some advantages in this regard. But even there, as soon as travel restarts reintroduction is not unlikely. We will see...

For example, many countries kept mandatory smallpox vaccinations long after the disease was eradicated within their borders because otherwise a single traveler can wreak havoc. Check for example smallpox reintroduction to Yugoslavia in 1972 by a single pilgrim. A quick martial law and quarantines helped contain it, but even then it caused, according to Wikipedia, 175 infections and 35 deaths.

If COVID-19 is as virulent as it is claimed to be I would not bet on NZ staying COVID-free after travel restarts. My 2c.

SKs "biggest spike in weeks" is a small fraction of our daily new cases, even per capita.

Japan and China both managed to regulate the virus out of existence with more success than we have had at stopping terrorist attacks, doesn't seem like all that bad of a comparison to me.

The US absolutely has no herd immunity.

Herd immunity kicks in at somewhere around 60-75% recovered, IIRC.

Unless the asymptomatic infection rate is at least an order of magnitude higher than anything remotely suggested, there's no possible way the US is approaching herd immunity. We're not even to 5% infected, let alone 50%.

This virus is more infectious and less deadly than originally estimated, putting herd immunity more like 80-85%.

Both of these comments are spreading misinformation about "herd immunity."

Any amount of immunity or resistance within the population will reduce the effective reproduction rate of the virus. This effect becomes more significant as the immunity rate increases.

Herd immunity is a colloquial term which refers to the point where there's so much immunity that the effective reproduction rate <1 and new infection clusters die out. The percentage of the population which needs to be immune to get R<0 depends on many factors, consider that many countries have managed to achieve this with near zero population immunity.

For example - if we imagine a hypothetical society which could indefinitely maintain measures like social distancing and mask wearing, the effective reproduction number will be low to begin with; the population immunity required to get to R<0 will therefore be lower.

Please start here before spreading additional misinformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

This is just blatantly false misinformation. To anyone reading this, just a simple google of antibody tests will show you how false this is.

Flagged.

Random antibody tests are how we found out it spread further than originally estimated, and is less deadly than originally estimated. The denominator increased, the numerator stayed the same, and R0 was revised upwards.

How are people talking about a second wave? You have over a thousand people still dying daily and over 20,000 cases/day.

When did the first wave even end?

In the US excluding New York, deaths have been basically flat for a month and a half. If we couldn't even stop the spread under quarantine, we're deluding ourselves if we think there's not going to be a huge spike over the next month or two. Most people are just not willing to take this seriously it seems, they flaunt the precautions, engage in all sorts of wishful thinking about 6-foot distances or cherry-picked stat declines, are unwilling to make personal or communal sacrifices. Its going to be a real shame when 1+ million americans die because we were unwilling to cut our own hair for a year.

You make it sound like cutting your own hair is the main hardship, which I suspect is not quite honest. What about being forced to walk outside in a mask, deferring medical care, not being able to hug your own {parents, grandparents, kids, grand kids} see other relatives and friends, not visiting many places you want to visit. And a pretty huge economic hit. And seeing more and more folks on the streets on the previously friendly town getting angrier and snappier; etc. etc.

I am not saying we should not "take coronavirus seriously" as you say. I do. But after taking it seriously I still see the current lockdowns in the US as counterproductive. Even if we could get this genie back into the bottle 3 months ago (which is not a given), you cannot now. Many states are open and people travel. Instead of forcing wide lockdowns we should focus on supporting those at high risk or worried and let others back to leading normal lives.

My 2c, no offense intended.

I am not aware of any restrictions on hugging your family. Either way, the virus is not going to worry about anyone's constitutional rights if they catch the virus from another family member.

> I am not aware of any restrictions on hugging your family.

If your family lives in elder supportive housing, there has been plenty of no visitor policies. Regardless, if you don't live in the same house with your family, visiting them may not be following the policies.

The point of lockdowns were to slow the spread and buy time to get more guided quarantine in place with contact tracing and to buy time for a vaccine to be made available.

Without those things, we risk the NYC/Italy situation where the health systems locked up and you had mass death from COVID plus excess deaths due to the overwhelming hospital demand.

The risk factors are pretty widely applicable. The strategy of old people, overweight men, etc getting “support” isn’t going to work.

I just can't comprehend the whole "mask is great injustice and limitation that breaks it all down". It is almost emotional response to wearing it disproportional to actual minor inconvenience it is.

I could list commonly worn clothes and shoes that are more uncomfortable then mask.

Really depends on the state. I think here in Oregon we have a pretty solid and (properly) cautious phased re-opening plan. Counties have to meet certain well-specified criteria before entering these phases.

Next door in Washington, we also have a properly cautious phased re-opening plan, with per-county metrics to meet before applying to move to the next phase. My county is still in Phase 1, and even so I've seen a fair number of people in close proximity in public without masks.

The universe tends toward maximum irony. If I had a nickel for every time I heard some variant of "That won't happen here"...

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