One expert said New Yorkers might be able to “throw a small party, depending on your age and demographic” — and who attends — by the end of the summer.
No politician or public-health expert can say when the novel coronavirus pandemic, and attendant lockdowns and social distancing, will end. But there is a roadmap — actually, a competing array of them — for extricating the United States from social isolation.
In keeping with this convincingly dystopian moment, the hurdles are substantial ones. But if Americans are able to overcome them, the country will veer back toward a recognizable society — with some chilling new features.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Easing Out of Lockdown
Public-health experts surveyed by The Daily Beast said there were three main things authorities need to be able to provide — effectively, affordably, and with quick results — to the American public before it’s safe to send at least some people back to work and into public life. First are millions more diagnostic tests, which can tell if someone currently has COVID-19. Then come antibody tests, which can determine if people recently had it and may have developed enough of the right kind of immune response to offer some protection from illness. Finally, authorities need more robust “contact-tracing” to track who might have been exposed to the virus and prevent them from spreading it further.
A much-discussed problematic and delayed rollout in the United States has kept diagnostic tests expensive, out of reach, and in some cases ineffective. Last week, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he doubted every American could be tested anytime soon. But one of President Trump’s top advisers on coronavirus testing, Adm. Brett Giroir, told Bloomberg News in an interview on Saturday that the U.S. is working on rapidly improving diagnostic testing in order to reopen the economy, including both widespread surveillance to catch new flareups and testing of people who have specific symptoms. Giroir said that by May the U.S. will be in the “ballpark” of the diagnostic capacity it needs…
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