The United States is entering a precarious few weeks in the fight against the coronavirus. New York City’s medical system is on the brink of collapse as the number of patients with the COVID-19 virus requiring intensive care is overwhelming system capacity. While it may be possible to channel scarce resources to the city to increase capacity, that becomes much more difficult if other hot spots such as San Francisco and Seattle follow a similar fate. Then we could be talking about a nationwide collapse of the medical system.

So while it’s understandable that national, state, and local leaders are focused on trying to avoid this dire scenario through aggressive measures that require mass lockdowns and business closures, they must also work on a strategy to open things up once the peak is passed.