the ER staff at a local hospital were among the first to go out to one of the few restaurants opened this weekend.
If the rural counties didn’t get any virus cases in February and early March, before shutdown orders, it is unlikely they will get any now when the urban counties are still on lockdown. They aren’t opening tourist attractions. The parks are still closed but local business can open for local people.
I have talked to neighbors who are talking about going to shop in neighboring counties with lower COVID rates. They feel they are at less risk. Shopping for things like groceries and nursery/plant/garden items. Not saying I agree with this but this is what I have heard a few people say is their solution to going out and feeling safer. Not sure the rural counties would agree with this!
@emilybee I am commenting on the news report, which chose to sensationalize Wharton’s model. (btw…The article mentions a study. Is there a study? They only linked a simulator.) I have questions about the simulator, but that doesn’t mean I’m discounting it. Didn’t mean to come off that way, if I did.
LA people would have to drive 600 miles to get to an open county.
My coworker’s husband had covid toes as his only symptom and tested positive and was diagnosed. Their whole family is quarantined now. His grandmother was on a ventilator and not doing well but amazingly is out of the hospital and home now! 
I had what I believe were covid toes when I was sick in early March so I’m 99.9% sure I had the virus already. I sure would love to know with certainty.
I do wonder if the grocery store is a minor or major place of current transmission. I hope your and her family will all be OK!
@emilybee What is Wharton’s model? Do you have a link? Thanks!
I think opening some places sooner than others in the country does make sense but in my opinion that would require limiting some travel between those areas and other areas with higher cases, and I don’t think that is going to happen. I also think we need to have good monitoring going on in places that are more open so that if things spring up we can stop the spread quickly before things get out of hand. I don’t think that is set up well yet most anywhere, but I might be wrong on that. I know NYC and other places in the northeast like RI, CT and elsewhere are working on getting that up and running. I think NY and RI are doing very well at having things up and running and ready from the sound of it. I worry that we will see lots of repeats of what happened in New Rochelle with one person spreading the virus widely undetected and causing months of cases as we see in the northeast still (or Boston’s Biogen’s conference). My brother’s family lives in an area greatly impacted by Biogen and the subsequent spread.
Of course, state and local health officials should take into consideration proximity to counties with higher case counts. If there are concerns about people traveling, then they need to make appropriate restrictions to mitigate that risk.
Still not immune.
They still have to go into their towns to shop, etc.
They likely have to travel to even bigger towns to get supplies.
I’m sure Black Hawk County in Iowa thought they were safe, too. Who goes to Iowa? Certainly not tourists. Or Grand Island, Nebraska. It’s in the middle of nowhere.
Imo, until there is adequate testing and tracing everywhere places are just going to have to close after opening for a bit. Rinse and repeat.
This statement and those like it on Dr. Birx’s opinion on Georgia’s opening and other experts worries me also, 'Dr. Brix also voiced concern, saying she doesn’t understand how Georgia residents will be able to get haircuts or tattoos while still honoring social distancing guidelines. ’
My mother was all set to rush out and get her haircut because she interpreted the fact that her state is opening in gradual waves now with haircuts at the start of it all meant that it was safe to get a haircut. I am urging her, in her late 70s and with some health issues, to not get her haircut until the numbers in her state are much, much lower. I hope that the middle of summer will be a good time for that. I think she is going to go much sooner and I hope she doesn’t get sick. I sent her and my father just a few n95 masks back in January and she doesn’t want to use them up so is wearing some mask that isn’t going to protect her and I think feeling a false sense of security as a result. This is the type of thing that worries me about opening. Yes, people will need to get haircuts, etc, but how can a person properly wear a mask and get a haircut at the same time? Maybe it can be done but I don’t know how.
I think the problem is that we never had a total shut down. Why is Starbucks (or the bakeries, or the gun store) essential but the small gift shop with only 10 customers a day isn’t? Why can people buy a t-shirt at Target but not at the t-shirt shop? Why is golf okay but tennis isn’t? People see this inequity and decide “Well, if they are all going to Home Depot, then I’m going too.”
Shut it all down or open up. Say stores that want to open, and can have a system of separating by 6’, can open. No different than the grocery store in that some will be good at it and other will be BAD at it, and you will have to decide if you want to be a customer. Many on CC who can afford it will prefer the stores that will do curb side pick up or use instacart or mail order or just do without. They will choose not to return to the health club or go for a hike in a state park. That is the right choice for them but not for the rest of the population who can’t afford it or who just want to get out of the house.
The shut down was to control the cases that needed hospitalization, thought to be needing ventilators. using resources like doctors. Yes, there is going to be another wave because this is a contagious virus that can’t controlled.
no reason to close, once open, unless health care systems are on the verge of overload. Since they aren’t here, I don’t see that happening, particularly if the average death victim age remains in the 80s or higher. In this county, confirmed cases form an almost perfect bell curve around the age of 45-as many teens have it as 70-somethings. Since the kids don’t seem very sick and the 70s are getting care as needed, and only the age 80-something cases are fatal, I don’t think we will close again. Not sure closing helps the 80 plus folks in any meaningful way anyway, and the restrictions on visitors to nursing homes may be permanent.
I agree that we should look at individual areas and I think the national guidelines mostly allow that. I don’t think that an area with 2 cases can as easily show a downward trend or that going from 2 to 3 cases means as much as going from 100 to 1000 elsewhere. People travel and so rural areas and urban areas can impact each other. If there was some way to have people in less impacted areas not travel to more impacted areas or vice versa, that might also help. I can’t imagine how this can work well, honestly. I hope for the best.
I am sure you are right that there are regulations that don’t make sense in terms of why some things are open and others are not. I do think that most of those decisions were made with the best of intentions by people who felt very pressed and pressured.
In my state I don’t trust the numbers in general from Jan, Feb, March, and even into April because we were not testing anyone but the most sick for the most part. The numbers are only for the most obvious, severe cases, and maybe not even all of those. I know of many who were very sick including one person who’s husband was having his lips turn blue and very low O2 levels but told there was no room at the hospital and no sense to test. The comment section of local media had many stories of people being turned away from testing. I could not get tested in March when I was sick and likely had it. No antibody test for our family yet, either.
I don’t think we know how many cases were in any area if the country in Jan-March or now.
About 6 hours of freeway driving from Seattle (little less from Portland) to get to one of WA counties without Covid cases. Trust me… no urban dwellers would want to drive there where a Denny’s is the most upscale dining place.
Thank you, Emilybee. That’s very scary both in terms of the economy and fatalities.
I agree that we never really shut down in ways that other countries did.
New Zealand just started allowing take out food last week. We’ve always allowed that! NZ clamped down early and never had a high number of cases either, yet they still did that.
South Africa just started allowing people to walk their dogs a short distance. They also banned all sales of alcohol and cigarettes during the shutdown. Pretty intense.
Italian mayors chased people around with drones, yelling at them for being outside too long.
And we have these crazy protests aimed at our relatively weak shutdown. I understand the frustration, and I know most people are quietly compliant, but I feel like we’re a bit of a nation of too many whiny babies.
And does anyone trust the numbers of these states that are opening up? The ones who closed down so late? Cough, FL, TX, GA, cough… And those states that never shut down and seem to be ignoring outbreaks among immigrants who work at meat processing plants - where do we start with them?
It still feels like a big ol’ mess out there. I won’t be traveling to a more complacent county or state to feel “safer”, that’s for sure!
J. Crew files for bankruptcy… more retailers to follow.
A lot of the current skepticism is due to the inconsistency of the warnings we got from CDC and WHO. “It’s not transmissable person to person”. “No need to close international travel”. “No need to wear masks”.
Then it was “The shutdown is necessary to prevent a surge in the hospitals”. The hospitals have mostly vacant beds but, now it’s “We need to keep the shutdown in place to prevent further deaths”. The shutdown will be for 14 days, then 30 days, now (in some states) it’s until July!
Meanwhile, the economic costs are much more solid and predictable. Businesses are going under. People can’t pay the rent or the mortgage. And it’s the class of people who (some irresponsibly) traveled to China and Europe and brought the plague back with them who are telling the blue collar workers who will never see the ski towns of Italy to stop being so irresponsible about opening their businesses.