While it's easy to take political sides with this, that's in the past. We could have had better CDC leadership than Redfield. We could have had better leadership on the NSC than we had after the advisory committee was disbanded. We could have had better presidential leadership. We could have used testing kits from Germany until US kits were effective.
There's a lot of shoulda/coulda/woulda. But here we are.
In much of the country that isn't NYC, including many of the places aggressively reopening, the first wave hasn't even peaked yet, so it's not so much that we missed the boat on the first wave and are now into preparing for potential later waves, we’re still actively screwing up the first wave.
a) You give the contact tracing system a complete and accurate history of your contacts.
b) You actually self-isolate when told you've had contact with an infectious person.
The civil liberties crowd will fight tooth and nail against a such that it is not possible to compel b. In the absence of enforcement, the conspiracy theorists will ignore it and the merely lazy will cheat.
Not even a competent attempt at contact tracing is going to work on the American people.
Of course, they had politicians who reacted quickly, firmly, universally, and most importantly early. In the USA, Corona was allowed to grow much much more and far fewer resources were brought to bear in an effective way against it. So its going to be much more difficult to get back under control, but not impossible, if we can turn it around.
Whats really happening besides that though is that the world is watching the self proclaimed world leader be the least competent and most impotent in their response, and throw its hands up and give up on good strategies like contact tracing. Its embarrasing.
California’s plan has multidimensional standards, it's not accurate to say it's “gated by test and trace”. But yes, the ability to effective monitor leading indicators of caseload and isolated the infected and exposed is fairly significant, and test is key to both and the trace part of test and trace an important factor in the second.
I wouldn't say "no one":
> Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday that the city will "never be completely open until we have a cure,"
This is also a mentality I've seen numerous times on the web, including this site.
This is absurd, and indicates a politician pandering for the next election.
For ebola, with 25% to 90% mortality, it can be justified.
For corona, with under 0.1% mortality for working-age people, it's madness.
"The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks."
-- Many of those making these comments are probably WFH with some level of normalcy so they don't really see how and why a lot of people are anxious to open things back up.
-- In the same general vein, they see a push to reopen as part of an agenda that puts "the economy" over people for the benefit of Big Business/The Rich.
-- They think there must be a near-term technological/policy fix if only the bad politicians would stop messing things up.
And if California is truly waiting for testing capacity, they may be waiting a long time because their rate of testing is extremely low compared to places that have opened up. New York has twice the per capita testing as CA and they have already began opening up parts of the state (despite being hit many times harder by the virus). Even NYC is about to hit the criteria for some reopening. Meanwhile, LA announced they would continue their lockdown until August. That sure sounds like they are on a "wait for a vaccine" plan.
The European nations that have eased restrictions have higher per capita testing than most US states. But they do not all have robust test and trace programs. Denmark opened up weeks ago, including many schools, but only last week announced a test and trace program.
Speak for yourself. The US doesn't have a vaccine, enough testing or tracing.
Wishing doesn't make it so. End the lockdown now.