A lack of clarity about the purpose of stay-at-home orders and mixed messages from federal and state government officials have confused the public, contributing to social distancing fatigue.
“I think there’s been a real lack in clarity as to the goals, which — the orders have [been] clear, but it has not been clear for people about why they’re supposed to do it,” said Dr. Suzanne Judd, an epidemiologist at the University of Alabama Birmingham’s School of Public Health.
In widely-watched coronavirus task force briefings, starting in mid-March, the coronavirus task force asked people to self-isolate for two weeks, and then another month, to “slow the spread.”
Around the same time, a grassroots campaign to “flatten the curve” took off — a goal understood to mean slowing the spread of the virus so that fewer people are sick at one time and allow the hospital system to care for everyone without becoming overwhelmed.
Weeks later, the United States as a whole has flattened the curve. The rate of new hospitalizations is down, thanks to social distancing efforts. Hospital systems have not been overwhelmed.
Yet, a majority of states have not withdrawn shelter-in-place orders, causing confusion about what the goal behind the orders is.
“You can see the resistance happening all over the country to the mandates,” Judd said. “People are starting to really revolt and say no, I don’t want to be stuck at home, especially young people who perceive themselves to not be at risk.”
Public support for state stay-at-home orders remains strong but has slipped in recent weeks. About 62% of the public say reopening the country too quickly is not worth it because more people would die, according to ABC News/Ipsos polling from May 8. Polling from April 24 showed that 72% of the public were more worried about moving too quickly rather than too slowly to reopen the country.
Most governors, in explaining the extended shutdowns, have said they want to see a sustained downward trend of new cases before declaring it safe to reopen.
But, at the same time, some prominent healthcare experts have suggested that the goal is or should be to “squash” or “crush” the curve to avoid a resurgence. The idea is to use social distancing and mitigation measures until the infection rate is close to zero, a different goal that has added to the confusion.
Many people have become frustrated and lost sight of the purpose of lockdowns.
“People have to understand, yes, we have a pandemic crisis, this is what you need to do,” said Dr. Lynn Perry Wooten at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. “But people also have to see real clear things about what the government is doing and where the end of the road is going to be, because good crisis leadership, at some point, is about resolving the crisis.”
The White House, in setting its guidelines for reopening, said that states should have a “downward trajectory” of cases over a two-week period before lifting lockdown measures.
Yet, some states have begun to reopen without fulfilling the administration’s criteria. Dr. Anthony Fauci and other government health experts cautioned governors that they were moving too quickly, while President Trump encouraged governors to continue reopening businesses to get the states’ economies back on track.
“One of the things that you really hope to see in crisis and emergency risk communication is consistent messaging so that the uncertainty that is inherent in a crisis is not increased. And we’ve not seen that in this case,” said Dr. Matthew Seeger, an expert in crisis response and communication at Wayne State University.
Nine states remain on lockdown and are inching toward lifting stay-at-home orders in the coming weeks, whereas most others have lifted some restrictions, rather than all of them, in an effort to revitalize their economies without putting people in danger. Some states, Seeger said, have begun reopening under the assumption that they have the coronavirus outbreak under control, “a well-established principle in disaster research called fantasy planning.”
“Another way to think about this is hope is not a plan,” Seeger said. “We’re making lots of assumptions about what opening up the country is going to look like, and I think we’re going to find that some of those assumptions do not hold.”
Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, Dr. Robert Redfield, have said that a second wave of the coronavirus is possible, and it would coincide with the regular flu season. The rate of new coronavirus cases each day is slowing, but the overall case-count is approaching 1.4 million, with roughly 83,000 deaths.
