‘It’s a Pandemic, Stupid’

If you do those things really carefully, yeah, we’re not going to be reopening bars anytime soon. And we’re not going to be having big indoor gatherings with thousands of people. But there’s a lot else that we can do in our economy that isn’t like that.

There’s a lot of confusion around what people should be doing. Can we do a quick round of rapid-fire Covid questioning? Sending your children to summer camp: good idea or bad idea?

That’s an “it depends.” It depends what the spread of Covid is in the area. It depends what kind of safety measures there are at the camp. It depends if your kid has any underlying health conditions that could make them more susceptible to illness. It depends how much of the activity is outdoors versus indoors. It depends how well the facility does at limiting mixing among kids.

We do have to have a discussion about schools because schools are really important for our kids in many, many ways. And the health and economic harms of closing schools are enormous.

What about going to a protest?

Outdoors is much safer than indoors. And outdoors with a mask is safer still. However, anytime you have lots of people getting together from different places, there is a risk of spread. And that means if you’ve had contact with others within six feet, then for the next two weeks you need to be very attentive to the fact that you may be spreading the infection.

Of course, use of things like tear gas, pepper spray — anything that increases coughing or gets people more likely to take their masks off — increases the risk. And, of course, being put in jail. Jails, we know, are a major risk of Covid spread.

Going to one of the president’s indoor rallies?

One thing that will be important is to know what proportion of people are wearing masks and where people are coming from. Now, people make judgments about what risk they want to take. The role of public health isn’t to tell people what risks they should take. It’s to tell people what the risks are so that people can decide for themselves.