Back to Work

Today I head back to work after a three-week convalescence. I'm not 100%, but I am feeling better. The lockdown is still in effect in Washington State. Governor Jay Inslee has promised to extend the lockdown when it expires on Monday, but he says he is shifting to a "phased-in" approach, which means that sectors of the economy will be reopened piecemeal.

May Day signals a back-to-work push. More than a dozen states are reopening. The question is how many coronavirus infections will result. Another question: Has the virus mutated to something less deadly?

Given my experience, I am skeptical that the virus has simply faded away after a couple months. COVID-19 is not to be dealt with cavalierly, as some states, like Georgia and Texas, appear to be doing. I expect to be in pain and my internal organs to be healing for next month or two.

What's most troubling about the back-to-work push is that there is still very little understanding how the coronavirus spreads. As The New York Times summarized in "What 5 Coronavirus Models Say the Next Month Will Look Like":

However good the modelers’ mathematical strategies may be, many of the descriptive facts about the virus are still unclear. Researchers aren’t sure about the rate at which people who become infected die, or about the rate of transmission to other people. They don’t know for sure how many people have already been infected and have some immunity to the disease — or how long that immunity will last. Even the count of coronavirus deaths itself is uncertain.

In other words, we know too little to lift the lockdown.

Maybe if lockdowns were lifted but strictly enforced mask and social-distancing requirements were implemented, then a return-to-work order could be justified.

Testing everyone doesn't appear to be on the horizon. Diagnostic tests need to be applied broadly to everyone -- both those with symptoms and those without (most who tested positive in the Ohio prison system were asymptomatic) -- but our public health system has nowhere near the ability to accomplish something like that. To date, there is no universally recognized, reliable antibody test. And even if antibodies are present, we don't know what sort of immunity those antibodies provide.

If you go out, wear a mask.