The Country Is Reopening—Now What?

Summer is here. Usually, the season comes with thoughts of beach days, ice cream, baseball, and day camp. But for many, the prospect of summer during the COVID-19 pandemic is met with an overall sense of anxiety and confusion—and questions.  

Is the beach safe? The ice cream shop is open, but should I really go? And more importantly, how are we any better off, in terms of infection prevention and treatment, than we were in mid-March, when stay-at-home orders were first put into place?

In other words, why are we reopening now, and how do we make sense of it all?

“I think it is hard for all of us to wrap our heads around reopening,” says Jaimie Meyer, MD, MS, a Yale Medicine infectious disease specialist. “There is nothing magically ‘safe’ about May 20, and very little difference in epidemiologic risk between May 19 and May 21. Only a public health approach that is data-driven will dictate a slow and measured reopening.”