The new messages from the White House are that the guidance to social distance will soon be relaxed, and that New Yorkers are a danger to the rest of the country and must self quarantine for 14 days if they leave the city. The latter guidance echos the measure announced last night by the Republican governor of Florida, which has resisted effective measures to control the virus and is about to be overwhelmed with cases.
Neither of these messages makes any sense from a public health perspective. Genuine experts speaking candidly are saying that at least 250,000 Americans already have the virus. This is roughly the one per thousand that is the source of concern in New York City. The impact of people leaving the city in this vast ocean of contagion will not be meaningful, especially if those people observe the current recommendations for social distancing.
So what is going on?
The reality is that we are about to see an explosion of cases all across the country, with most of the country just a week or two behind New York. By Easter there will be no question of releasing restrictions. If we are successful that will see the peak of infections and we will have a national horror show similar to Italy today. States that do not lock down will be in the early stages of a public health disaster of almost unimaginable severity.
Republicans including Trump cannot accept blame for that disaster from the people they are encouraging to behave badly now. They will need a scapegoat, preferably one they can identify with Democrats to reinforce the political divisions that will support their reelection. This is a replay of blaming China for ruining Trump’s perfect economy, but with the aim of further dividing Americans.
We are at a critical point in this fight. With testing finally coming on line we have a slim window to catch and kill the virus. If the lockdown remains in place for a few more weeks and is joined by irresponsible Republican governors, testing can begin to isolate cases and allow tracking and isolation of those exposed. If we do this right we will keep the number of infected to a few million and the number of deaths in the tens of thousands. If we fail to control spread of the virus in the next month we will see uncontrolled spread to a large percentage of the population and millions of deaths. I do not believe that Republicans can survive that outcome, so I expect they will not support anything as stupid as filling the churches on Easter. I do think they will cast this as a failure of blue states which ruined their lovely plan.