I just found out that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has extended the state-wide coronavirus stay-at-home order until June 13. He also stated that regions that meet reopening requirements can start to reopen before then.
The never ending changing of the goalposts and mixed messages from all levels of government have led to people tuning out. More and more people are out in the parks, with and without masks. People on social media are finally starting to voice their dissenting opinions and at some point, this will end.
I read in the New York Times an interesting essay on How Pandemics End. In the piece, the author writes:
One possibility, historians say, is that the coronavirus pandemic could end socially before it ends medically. People may grow so tired of the restrictions that they declare the pandemic over, even as the virus continues to smolder in the population and before a vaccine or effective treatment is found.
“I think there is this sort of social psychological issue of exhaustion and frustration,” the Yale historian Naomi Rogers said. “We may be in a moment when people are just saying: ‘That’s enough. I deserve to be able to return to my regular life.’”
It is happening already; in some states, governors have lifted restrictions, allowing hair salons, nail salons and gyms to reopen, in defiance of warnings by public health officials that such steps are premature. As the economic catastrophe wreaked by the lockdowns grows, more and more people may be ready to say “enough.”
“There is this sort of conflict now,” Dr. Rogers said. Public health officials have a medical end in sight, but some members of the public see a social end.
“Who gets to claim the end?” Dr. Rogers said. “If you push back against the notion of its ending, what are you pushing back against? What are you claiming when you say, ‘No, it is not ending.’”
In certain states, the metrics used to signal an end to the “lockdowns” are virtually impossible to meet. In California, Governor Newsom wants counties to have ZERO deaths in a two week period in order to reopen.
Supervisors in Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange counties are discussing a joint effort to convince Newsom to revise his benchmarks, which among other milestones call for no COVID-19 deaths for two weeks and just one new case per 10,000 for two weeks.
If counties meet the benchmarks, businesses can reopen faster in the governor’s four-phase reopening plan. California is currently in phase two, which allows florists, bookstores, and other retailers to offer curbside pickup.
Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, each with millions of residents, currently don’t qualify to reopen earlier. “(The benchmarks) are unattainable by the County of Riverside and quite frankly, unattainable by any urban county in Southern California,” Riverside County Supervisor V. Manuel Perez said Friday, May 8.
The quarantine fatigue is boiling over into frustration and rage. We went from flatten the curve, to crush the curve to “we're not moving past Covid-19, we're learning to live with it.” It’s now starting to affect our mental health.
Julia Marcus at The Atlantic writes":
#StayHome had its moment. The United States urgently needed to flatten the curve and buy time to scale up health-care capacity, testing, and contact tracing. But quarantine fatigue is real. I’m not talking about the people who are staging militaristic protests against the supposed coronavirus hoax. I’m talking about those who are experiencing the profound burden of extreme physical and social distancing. In addition to the economic hardship it causes, isolation can severely damage psychological well-being, especially for people who were already depressed or anxious before the crisis started. In a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly half of Americans said that the coronavirus pandemic has harmed their mental health.
It’s time to move on. The rest of the country has already done exactly that. With each passing day, the news isn’t getting worse, it’s getting better.
#endthelockdownNOW
The Media
There is a new set of documentaries on Netflix called “Trial by Media.” It’s a six-part series, produced by George Clooney and Jeffrey Toobin. It’s not really and indictment of media and their terrible sensationalism, it’s about several high profile trials and how the court of public opinion is manipulated:
Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 25 year veteran of the fast paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in a number of hit broadway and off-broadway musicals including “Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. In addition, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.