BREAKING: Gov. Ducey closes all bars, gyms, movie theaters for 30 days

[regnaD kciN]

21. If "70% of the country is infected with this thing"...

...according to the metrics from the COVID-19 Projections Using Machine Learning model, we're looking at 1,710,507 Americans dead.

We should never have ended the (first ?) lockdown until we had the testing and contact-tracing measures in charge to quickly contain any new outbreak.

To be clear, while I blame Trump and Republican governors first and foremost, I don't exempt Democratic governors from criticism, either. Too many of them (and I include Newsom in California and Inslee here in Washington) set loose metrics that allowed their states to move into reopening once numbers of cases dropped, but didn't require enough in place for testing/contact-tracing. So they, too, reopened before they were ready...and are now seeing the increase in cases we feared without measures to keep it under control.

And, while a second lockdown until we can really get testing/contact-tracing in place nationwide would be the most logical step, I'm near-certain it won't happen. As Chris Hayes pointed out a few days ago, the whole point of the lockdown (which was sure to crash the economy at least temporarily) was to buy us time for the proper testing/contact-tracing measures to be enacted. Now, we're right back at square one, but with the economy already in a severe recession. A second lockdown is going to make that much, much worse (enact one nationwide, and watch the Dow drop to 15,000 and unemployment shoot up beyond 30%), and we know the Republicans in charge will never allow that, or be willing to enact the public-welfare measures needed to even partially cushion the blow. So, most likely, we'll keep seeing these band-aid approaches, where areas of public and economic life will be dialed back for a time until the numbers stop dropping, but without calling it a lockdown or actually telling most non-essential businesses to close (note the closing of bars but not restaurants in this case) or people to stay home. And we all know what half-measures do: just keep us on this roller-coaster indefinitely (or at least until a reliable vaccine is out and enough of the population has been inoculated), at continuing cost to human life. But "FREEEEEEDUMB!!!"...