Post 65 - May 15, 2020
Day 65…
Today, parts of New York will begin phase one of re-opening.
What exactly does that mean?
Here in New York, that means that today, in five areas of the state, construction can start up again.
Those five areas, all of which have had longer than two weeks of steady decline in hospitalizations and new cases, include Central New York, the Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, North Country and Southern Tier.
This does NOT include New York City.
Agriculture, fishing, forestry and hunting in those five areas can pick up.
Manufacturing and wholesale trade there can also restart.
On the NY State website, each of these areas has a link that explains what the guidelines are for ensuring worker’s safety.
There are mandatory guidelines in place for this phase one re-opening which include distancing as well as PPE that must be provided by employers. For indoor work, there can only be one person per 250 square foot of space, etc.
There are also recommended guidelines for safe practices that include creating additional space for employees who’s in-person presence is necessary and encouraging those employees who can, to work from home.
Phase one does not include reopening restaurants, bars or movie theatres.
Those don’t restart until phase three and, in the case of entertainment, phase four.
Those are still far ahead of us.
All of the areas that are reopening phase one today, are rural areas which have been far less impacted. The Western region where Buffalo is and the Capital region where Albany is, will remain closed as will the downstate regions which are in the greater New York City area.
Rochester, in the Finger Lakes region, is the biggest urban area that can begin to reopen in the state.
Again, all of the regions that are re-opening, are only entering into Phase One.
The numbers of new cases and hospitalizations in those regions will be monitored. If those numbers start to rise too high, then some of the reopening will be scaled back so that local health facilities do not become overwhelmed.
All of this seems clear, rational, and logical.
Will it work?
That remains to be seen.
There is no doubt that there will be additional infections.
All of the guidelines obviously require a certain amount of voluntary compliance and enforcement from workers and employers and not everybody will follow them.
So, we will see what happens.
The aircraft carrier, USS Theodore Roosevelt, experienced an outbreak of the virus that infected 1,100 crew members. That’s just over 20% of the crew.
Remember, this is the ship that Captain Brett Crozier was relieved of duty from for sounding the alarm that the virus was spreading through the cramped quarters of the ship.
All 4,800 Crew members have now gone through at least an initial round of testing.
Personnel who either tested positive or seemed to have symptoms of COVID-19 were evacuated.
As those crew members recovered, they were tested again.
When they tested negative twice, they were then allowed to return to the carrier.
Yesterday, it was reported that five USS Theodore Roosevelt sailors who had had the virus, had been evacuated, recovered, tested negative for the virus, twice, and returned to the ship, have now tested positive for COVID-19.
They seem to have gotten it again.
It remains to be seen what this really means.
Were the crew members really recovered?
The tests are not 100% accurate. 5 out of 1,100 is .45% which falls within the margin of error for false negatives for the tests.
We are all assuming, on some level, that having the antibodies for the coronavirus provides some measure of immunity against getting it again.
This calls that into question.
This development doesn’t mean that having the antibodies DOESN’T provide immunity, it just further supports the fact that WE DON’T KNOW YET.
Europe is starting to discuss reopening for tourism.
Most of what they are planning to try, is regional tourism.
If you are thinking that a wild summer in Mykonos is in your future this year, you should probably think again.
Greece looks like it may be one of the first countries to reopen but that will probably be for European visitors only and from selected countries at that.
Bars and restaurants will unlikely be open - it won’t be a typical summer in the Greek islands.
After flattening their curve, South Korea eased restrictions and allowed bars and nightclubs to reopen.
On May 6, a guy who had visited 5 nightclubs in one night in Seoul tested positive for the virus.
Officials identified nearly 11,000 people who were in that area that night and have already tested over 7,000 of them.
100 new cases of the virus have been linked to that one guy, and South Korea just reclosed all the bars and clubs.
Germany, after easing some of its restrictions is now seeing numbers rise and may need to pull back as well.
They have increased testing in a way that is well-coordinated and thorough and are, as a result, in a great position to be able to monitor well.
The country of Lebanon went back into complete lockdown a couple of days ago after cases spiked badly after they reopened too soon.
Here in the US, our testing is so all over the place that it is extremely difficult to tell what is really happening.
It is impossible to compare the numbers of a state that has tested 1% of its population with the numbers of a state that has tested more.
The President thinks that testing is overrated.
“When you test, you have a case,” he said. “When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”
If we stop testing the numbers will go down.
The cases of COVID-19 won’t go down, just the reported numbers.
I don’t really know what to say about that.
I can’t pretend to know what is going to happen as we move forward.
Honestly, nobody can.
All of the models we have been operating under have been inaccurate.
The science behind them is sound, in that, if such and such a trend continues, this is what the result is likely to be.
What happens, though, is that the trend doesn’t continue, it changes, so the models need to be recalculated.
That doesn’t make the models any less valuable.
When all of this began, the CDC models indicated that we would be overwhelmed by this virus in NY and we would not have enough ventilators to deal with the number of people who might need them.
That was a reasonable conclusion to draw at that point in time.
What happened was, we changed our behavior.
We stayed at home.
That changed the outcome. We did not, in fact, need all of the ventilators the CDC had said we would.
That didn’t make the CDC’s initial modeling wrong, it just means that the data that went into creating them changed.
We stayed home.
As we all move to reopen, there are going to be surprising successes and tragic disasters.
Nobody is going to be able to definitively predict what is going to happen in any one place.
We are going to see places where cases decline and places where cases spike.
Almost no area of the country is moving forward in the same way as any other area is.
There’s going to be a certain amount of luck involved in which places see success.
New York City’s “pause” has been extended to May 28.
Beaches in the four-state area (New York, New Jersey, Delaware and New York) will reopen on Memorial Day.
It’s a little soon for Cuomo’s taste, but the fear is that if we don’t reopen the NY beaches then New Yorkers will just flood into areas that do.
Nobody wants people to move around like that.
Mayor De Blasio doesn’t agree. He does not want New York City to ease its restrictions until June.
Nobody is going to agree and there is going to be a lot of noise.
Nobody has a definitive answer.
In the end, I think that this is largely going to be about us.
It is going to be about what WE do.
That is going to make the difference between success and failure
The further we go into this, the less we actually seem to know.
That’s OK.
Socrates said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
We are all blessed with common sense in some form or another.
Now is the time to use it.
Make your own decisions knowing that whatever you decide will affect the people around you.
The more we consider each other the better off we will be.
Let’s get our lives back.
Together.