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As six states prepare to end Shelter in Place and face Coronavirus head-on, the other 46 states will be watching to see if the canary lives or dies.
For Americans, it has been a crash course in the “uncertain nature and limitations of scientific knowledge,” suggests Daniel Henninger in the WSJ.
America Tired of Disputes over Testing
Cancer, heart disease, and many serious conditions, as well as less urgent elective surgeries, have been put on hold. In states with low incidence of coronavirus, hospitals will fill the void by “simply proceeding with surgeries,” continues Mr. Henninger.
Once oncologists and cardiologists go back to work without getting arrested, others will see a green light to do so.
Lockdown’s Moral and Ethical Snag
Some doctors argue that lockdowns are suppressing vaccination programs in Africa and elsewhere and will raise the incidence of childhood death and disfigurement from polio, yellow fever and meningitis. Shaming lockdown dissenters won’t work anymore.
Spring Fever Will Prevail
Social distancing will give way rapidly to … years of learned human behavior, not Mr. Trump’s tweets. People won’t stay cooped up indefinitely. Spring temperatures (and spring fever) will pull people outside en masse, even in New York and San Francisco. Workplaces will open and the 6-foot barrier will fall as people gather in groups for coffee, on the street, benches, parks, bars and along Main Street.
Managing Covid as A Chronic Disease, Not The Only Disease
Hospitals may need special Covid wards and other temporary facilities while waiting for effective therapies and a vaccine next year. But however challenging the treatment and worker-protection protocols for Covid, it will have to join the other illness curves the health-care system unavoidably must manage in the next year: the backlog of delayed surgeries, seasonal flu and possibly the return of coronavirus itself in the fall.
It’s Not D-Day
Post-peak coronavirus will be a battle, but it won’t be D-Day. The whole country just did coronavirus D-Day, and we survived. With or without official permission, with or without New York and California, the American people are going to self-release from their coronavirus isolation and get back to business.
Neither Trumpian Mobs nor Anti Science
It is humanity re-establishing social equilibrium. For that, we don’t need instruction.
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