[Genuine Realist]

Cases are already coming down.  The 7-day average of new cases peaked a month ago at 68,000/day; it is now down down to 43,000/day.  Hospitalizations and deaths are behind but also starting to decline.  While some states have backed off their reopening plans, and some have re-shut down some things likes bars and restaurants, no one has gone back to a lockdown, and there doesn't appear to be evidence that they should.

I think the pandemic can be successfully managed by:
1) Universal face coverings
2) Continue to close high risk activities (large gatherings, indoor activities without facemasks, etc.)
3) Shielding vulnerable populations
4) Testing and tracing as aggressively as can be done

Yes, a shutdown might further suppress the virus so that test and trace is easier and so that levels might be low enough to reopen some higher risk activities, but given the current trajectory, it is hard to argue on the necessity of another shutdown barring a third wave.

BC

Whether necessary or not, it ain't gonna happen.

This veers into politics, but bears on the controversy about masks. Almost everyone who comments on the 2016 election and prophecies about 2020 ignores what I think is the most meaningful statistic of the 2016 election. This is the number of counties that Trump won (or, more accurately, the Democrats lost.) There are about 3113 counties in the United States. Of that number, Trump won around 80%, 2,626. Hilary won 487. Her electoral majority derived almost exclusively from the super-rich areas of New York and California, plus various academic enclaves. Outside of those areas, the Democrats generally got blasted.

To say 'Trump won' is a misnomer. The incredibly obnoxious Trump won in spite of himself. It's more accurate to say that vast regions of the US have lost all faith in the Democratic Party. The iconoclast Michael Lind defines the core Democratic force as the 'Managerial Elite', which dominates media, culture, and governmental authority. He sees its membership as regarding themselves as enlightened in a way that their fellow citizens are not - 'Woke'? - inhabiting cultural oases in Manhattan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and various college campuses, and contemptuous of the Yahoos that dwell in the deserts that lie just beyond those borders. Of course the major media endlessly reinforces their bigotry (sic). 

This gets back to Covid protocols, because - generally speaking - Lind's managerial elite can handle a lockdown far more easily than the rest of American (or European, for that matter) society. It's fairly easy for its spokespersons to blithely suggest the most extreme measures, because it's generally not as affected by them as the rest of society. And - characteristically- it will cavalierly damn those who protest that it IS too much, as ignorant, unscientific, etc. 

I remain a believer in popular wisdom. My own thought is that we have actually arrived at the sort of balanced social distancing BC recommends in the post above, by trial and error, and a little of this, a little of that. It's actually not too bad a result in five months. It has not been helped by Trump's personalization of the issues - or by the tendency of the elite to dismiss the protests of those who wondered about lockdown overreach as ignorant fools.

[Genuine Realist]

Cases are already coming down.  The 7-day average of new cases peaked a month ago at 68,000/day; it is now down down to 43,000/day.  Hospitalizations and deaths are behind but also starting to decline.  While some states have backed off their reopening plans, and some have re-shut down some things likes bars and restaurants, no one has gone back to a lockdown, and there doesn't appear to be evidence that they should.

I think the pandemic can be successfully managed by:
1) Universal face coverings
2) Continue to close high risk activities (large gatherings, indoor activities without facemasks, etc.)
3) Shielding vulnerable populations
4) Testing and tracing as aggressively as can be done

Yes, a shutdown might further suppress the virus so that test and trace is easier and so that levels might be low enough to reopen some higher risk activities, but given the current trajectory, it is hard to argue on the necessity of another shutdown barring a third wave.

BC

Whether necessary or not, it ain't gonna happen.

This veers into politics, but bears on the controversy about masks. Almost everyone who comments on the 2016 election and prophecies about 2020 ignores what I think is the most meaningful statistic of the 2016 election. This is the number of counties that Trump won (or, more accurately, the Democrats lost.) There are about 3113 counties in the United States. Of that number, Trump won around 80%, 2,626. Hilary won 487. Her electoral majority derived almost exclusively from the super-rich areas of New York and California, plus various academic enclaves. Outside of those areas, the Democrats generally got blasted.

To say 'Trump won' is a misnomer. The incredibly obnoxious Trump won in spite of himself. It's more accurate to say that vast regions of the US have lost all faith in the Democratic Party. The iconoclast Michael Lind defines the core Democratic force as the 'Managerial Elite', which dominates media, culture, and governmental authority. He sees its membership as regarding themselves as enlightened in a way that their fellow citizens are not - 'Woke'? - inhabiting cultural oases in Manhattan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and various college campuses, and contemptuous of the Yahoos that dwell in the deserts that lie just beyond those borders. Of course the major media endlessly reinforces their bigotry (sic). 

This gets back to Covid protocols, because - generally speaking - Lind's managerial elite can handle a lockdown far more easily than the rest of American (or European, for that matter) society. It's fairly easy for its spokespersons to blithely suggest the most extreme measures, because it's generally not as affected by them as the rest of society. And - characteristically- it will cavalierly damn those who protest that it IS too much, as ignorant, unscientific, etc. 

I remain a believer in popular wisdom. My own thought is that we have actually arrived at the sort of balanced social distancing BC recommends in the post above, by trial and error, and a little of this, a little of that. It's actually not too bad a result in five months. It has not been helped by Trump's personalization of the issues - or by the tendency of the elite to dismiss the protests of those who wondered about lockdown overreach as ignorant fools.