Health guidelines for reopening, and other April COVID links

This CBS New York article lays out some specific criteria for Governor Cuomo starting to lift New York's lockdowns and relax its stay-at-home orders. In short:

• Hospitalizations have been on the decline for 14 days


• At least 30% of hospital beds and ICU beds available


• Ready to do contact tracing, with 30 tracers per 100,000 people


• Positive tests are on the decline even when a lot of testing (it doesn't say exactly how much) is being done


• Each individual business that wants to reopen must present a plan to keep its workers safe, and industries with lower contact risks will reopen first

Different parts of the country are in all different places pandemic-wise, so you'd have to hold each state or city up to that list individually and see how it compares. Take this article about Texas' plans to enter the first stage of reopening on May 1:

• Hospitalizations have "held steady" (for 17 days? It isn't clear)


• Hospitals aren't filled to capacity (doesn't say how close they are)


• Ready to do contact tracing, but even with the number of tracers they plan to add, it's only about 7 tracers per 100,000 people


• Infection rate "has been on the decline for the past 17 days" (doesn't say how much testing there is)


• First stage of reopening includes "restaurants, retail stores, movie theaters...museums and libraries", apparently all of them, limited to 25% capacity. State-licensed healthcare professionals, too, "can reopen offices with precautions." Childcare and summer camps are still closed; next phase of reopening can only begin after "two weeks of data to confirm no flare-up of Covid-19."

So...not as reckless as they could be, but not as cautious and well-prepared as you might hope for, either?

And the order of business reopening seems...odd. For another comparison, Ohio is doing non-urgent medical services first, followed quickly by manufacturing and construction; consumer retail will be held off for 2 weeks, presumably more if infections flare back up; and restaurants are being saved for even later. Libraries in particular are designing their own reopening timeline, where the first stage involves staff providing limited on-site services (e.g. reference calls, interlibrary loan, shelving returns from the drop box) without being open to the public at all.

Ugh. I really hope we can thread this needle, but it's not going to be easy.

Anyway, have some links. (I pulled out the good-for-the-soul ones and saved them for the end.)

[caption id="attachment_5350" align="aligncenter" width="714"] Officials on the Council to Reopen Crystal Tokyo[/caption]

( so I stopped buying the shampoo for itchy scalp and dandruff and can you guess I have now? Can you predict what currently afflicts me? )