Open, close, open, close. Rinse and repeat.
Oregon has yet to fully reopen, but if the rest of the world is any guide—there’s a chance it isn’t—we’ll be closing back down before too long. In place after place, restrictions have been lifted only to be reimposed. The latest is France:
Just one week after a third of French schoolchildren went back to school in an easing ofthe coronavirus lockdown, there’s been a worrying flareup of about 70 COVID-19 cases linked to schools.
Some schools were opened last week and a further 150,000 junior high students went back to the classroom Monday as further restrictions were loosened by the government. The move initially spelled relief: the end of homeschooling for many hundreds of thousands of exhausted French parents, many whom were also working from home.
But French Education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer sounded the alarm Monday, telling French radio RTL that the return has put some children in new danger of contamination. He said the affected schools are being closed immediately. French media reported that seven schools in northern France were closed.
Coronavirus flare-ups force France to re-close some schools, CBS News, 18 May 2020.
France isn’t alone in this second wave problem. Without a significant percentage—80% of more—of the population masking up, it’s hard to see how the virus won’t continue to spread. Except in a second wave, the virus isn’t starting from zero. It’s already in the community, so a second wave could certainly be worse. (Hong Kong, which has almost universal masking with their population, has recorded just 4 deaths.)
How could the rest of the world not be a guide? Mainly because no one, with the possible exception of Sweden, has done a worse job against the coronavirus. We’ve gotten no leadership from the federal government, leadership that ranges from pretty good to pretty poor at the state level (though some states are far worse than others), and here in Marion County awful leadership at the county level.
Worse still, we have an entire segment of the population who’ve made it their mission to “fight back” against the those who would protect society.
One way or another, we get the yo-yos.