| Gyms, tattoo shops, and bowling alleys in Georgia can now serve customers again, following a lockdown-exit plan announced last week by Governor Brian Kemp. Sit-down restaurants can follow suit on Monday. It’s the most aggressive reopening in the country and began a week after the Trump administration outlined a suggested reopening plan for states.
Those guidelines suggest, among other criteria, that states wait until new cases decline for two weeks before loosening restrictions designed to contain the spread of Covid-19. These “gating” measures hope to reduce the risk of reaccelerating an outbreak. Georgia isn’t close to meeting that key mark. It reported its highest-ever daily increase in new coronavirus cases on April 17, adding over 1,500, and has only seen three days of consecutive decline since.
Georgia’s move to reopen these less-than-essential businesses is especially risky. The state has limited information on the scope of its significant outbreak because it has tested a smaller proportion of its citizens than most of the country and didn’t issue a statewide stay-home order until April 3. While businesses are required to take extra precautions and maintain a degree of social distancing, any increasing travel and activity will create opportunities for the virus to spread. Georgia is embarking on an experiment in emphasizing economic concerns over public health advice, and potential failure has a cost in human lives.
There are good reasons that the White House benchmarks call for a two-week decline in new cases: Covid-19 spreads rapidly and sometimes via carriers who have no symptoms. And because the coronavirus has a long incubation period, it can take time for outbreaks to become large enough to discern. If the virus takes hold in dense or vulnerable places like nursing homes and prisons, this leads to disaster. Georgia seems determined to ignore this reality.
Widespread testing can alleviate some of these concerns. Random population testing concentrated in vulnerable areas can catch deadly outbreaks. Tracking, tracing, and isolating the contacts of infected individuals can interrupt chains of transmission before they grow unmanageable. Frequent checks of health-care workers can help keep them safe and reduces strain on hospitals. However, all of this requires a level of testing and infrastructure that takes time to create. Georgia is planning on launching a contact-tracing program. Instead of being tested in the more manageable conditions of a lockdown, it will undergo an immediate trial by fire.
While President Trump said he disagrees with the particulars of Georgia’s reopening plan at a Wednesday press conference, he has been calling for a rapid return to economic activity for weeks. Kemp seems to be listening to previous versions of the president. He may also be spooked by the long-term consequences of enormous public spending on benefits like unemployment and leaving thousands of businesses without income.
Kemp may not even get the economic rebound he wants. If people don’t feel it’s safe to go out, they won’t. Reopening could risk new infections with little benefit. While staying locked down is tremendously costly for an economy, a more substantial second-wave outbreak could force a renewed period of mitigation, wiping out any gains of an earlier economic restart.
It’s easy to lift restrictions. The consequences of doing so will take some time to appear, and cleaning them up will take even longer.—Max Nisen |