There is this peculiar internet pattern I've seen many times now, where people seem to believe if they can explain why X happened, they can therefore prove X didn't happen. It is one of those things I just can't wrap my head around. You say in one sentence that hospitals don't have overcapacity right now, then explain exactly why they do.
That's overcapacity. They shut down everything to make capacity for the incoming crush of Covid cases, and those have almost entirely not materialized. So we are grossly overcapacity for Covid cases, in the vast majority of the country.
"In NY"
New York is the outlier. It is not what the entire country should be basing its plans on. It isn't even what the entire State of New York should be basing its plans on.
"so opening up is going to be a collection of 50 plans as well, but that's not no plan."
I didn't say there was no plan. I'm observing that the stated plan is deviating from the actions. Almost everywhere, we have nominally hit the benchmarks that were the initial trigger for re-opening things, but for the most part, anyone reopening things is doing it against massive political pressure and criticism, while people, yea verily even people in power like governors, are pushing for it to continue for more weeks or months with no end criterion given.
I'll reiterate that one possibility is just lag, but if in another month there's still a lot of lockdowns going on in non-outlier areas, that's clearly not going to be what's going on.
(I know there's a lot of grumbling online, but my personal position is, my job is nearly unaffected, our schools are already closed for the rest of the year regardless and I'm planning on staying home no matter what the state does, and I live close enough to one of the outlier areas that I would be perfectly fine with me personally still being in significant lockdown in another month. But what's good for me isn't what's good for everybody in the country.)
The head of the federal government has utilized the defense production act to force people to work in meat processing plants where the virus is rampant - but has done much less to get testing, tracing, and PPE unblocked. States appear to be struggling as well. Hard to tell about a lot of the details; there's definitely a 'fog of war'.
Since we are not opening up, that does not seem to be the strategy any more, regardless of what is stated. What is done matters a lot more than what is said.
What is the strategy now? That's a good question. Based on the actions I see, I find it hard to construct an answer to that question. But there sure does seem to be an unhealthy large dollop of deciding that Lockdowns are Rightthink and Opening Up is Wrongthink. I've noticed how few people advocating for continuing the lockdowns for months more provide concrete metrics for when we should stop.
Because most of the sensible concrete metrics you would have based on the whole "flattening the curve" plan have been met.... yet... here we are.
The nicest and happiest interpretation is just lag time, since of course you can't turn on a dime and change policy on a metaphorical Tuesday at 3:14:34 pm just because you finally hit a milestone. I'd put more stock in that interpretation if there wasn't such substantial attacks being put forth on what seems to be the very idea that some places may be able to open up now. But if in the next couple of weeks we do start substantially opening up (NY may not be able to, maybe a couple of other areas) then perhaps it was just latency in the end.