Notes on Reopening (It's Not All or Nothing!)

It's been a little over a month since I last posted in here, but of course I have thoughts churning in my head that I need to get out, so here I am once again.

So we are on day 50-something of staying at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, as Trevor Noah likes to remind everyone at the beginning of "The Daily Social Distancing Show." However, the governor of my state, Larry Hogan, recently announced that as of today Maryland can transition from a "Stay Home Order" to a "Safer At Home Order" as of today. Yeah, a lot of government jargon for transitioning to phase one of reopening.

But. The way the news presented it was as if it was a state-wide reopening, when it's really just that individual counties have permission to begin that process. I don't know why we don't just go county/region-by-region as New York has. Because I currently live in Prince George's County, which has been the hot zone in MD for this infection, and we are definitely not ready to reopen yet. Unfortunately.

And guess what? I think this lockdown sucks, and I want it to end sooner rather than later. And/but/and I ALSO want to be safe when doing so, and to minimize necessary deaths and save lives wherever possible.

I've just been so frustrated at the discourse around reopening. First off, everyone seems to think the economy is either "open" or "closed," when truly we've been something in the middle this whole time, because of course essential businesses are essential.

And then it has taken on a hyper-partisan tone, where conservative = prioritizing the economy over lives and liberal = comfortable with a strict lockdown no matter how long that goes on. It may be a reaction to the Trump administration's egregious mishandling of this pandemic from the beginning, but in actuality "reopening" is far more complex than that.

A friend on Facebook suggested that Governor Hogan was pressured by the lockdown protesters into reopening prematurely. Her husband questioned this, and I have to say I agree with him. From what I had been reading, Hogan had always been about making sure certain measures were in place before beginning reopening. And yeah, they aren't for much of the Baltimore-Washington region, so I am wondering why this "reopening" was announced as if it is a state-wide thing. And I'm wondering even more why more of those 500,000 covid-19 tests Hogan got from South Korea haven't made there way to PG County.

But overall I still like and respect Larry Hogan. He's the rare Republican who hasn't sold his soul to the Trumpsters, so I don't know why he would now. And he seems to have always had a plan for combating this virus beyond just sitting on his ass like the guy in the White House.

Because the truth is that we need to be taking measures to gradually, safely reopen at some point. Saving lives matters, but so do people's livelihoods, and their mental health/quality-of-life, etc. etc. I accept that Prince George's County isn't there yet, and perhaps won't be for awhile. But I wish there was more nuanced discourse about the how and when, and yes, why, of reopening.