[2006alum]

Politically it gets hard to start picking non-essential industry winners and losers.  The goal in early March was to do something sweeping ASAP.   Once you get into picking different industries you are likely to start picking political battles that might slow the process down quite a bit.  Inevitably some business would be missed that should qualify...equestrian jumping?   Frisbee golf courses?   Baseball batting cages?  Archery ranges?   At some point it is just faster and more effective to say everything that is non-essential is closed.  And golf and tennis are simply not essential.

FWIW, Nate Silver has been saying for a few weeks now that "re-opening" is going to be much, much more difficult than imposing lockdowns/sheltering in place, for precisely these reasons, coupled with the fact that once a flare-up reemerges (which it almost inevitably will in at least some jurisdictions), there will be less appetite to return to sheltering in place, and it will be harder to assess when second and third waves have "peaked."

...Which, of course, is why we need tons of testing, effective contact tracing, and clear isolation protocols...

[2006alum]

Politically it gets hard to start picking non-essential industry winners and losers.  The goal in early March was to do something sweeping ASAP.   Once you get into picking different industries you are likely to start picking political battles that might slow the process down quite a bit.  Inevitably some business would be missed that should qualify...equestrian jumping?   Frisbee golf courses?   Baseball batting cages?  Archery ranges?   At some point it is just faster and more effective to say everything that is non-essential is closed.  And golf and tennis are simply not essential.

FWIW, Nate Silver has been saying for a few weeks now that "re-opening" is going to be much, much more difficult than imposing lockdowns/sheltering in place, for precisely these reasons, coupled with the fact that once a flare-up reemerges (which it almost inevitably will in at least some jurisdictions), there will be less appetite to return to sheltering in place, and it will be harder to assess when second and third waves have "peaked."

...Which, of course, is why we need tons of testing, effective contact tracing, and clear isolation protocols...