Time to Reopen

Now that we  know coronavirus is deadly and during this process we have devastated our economy, let’s get back to work. We know this: Protect the vulnerable population. This means any densely populated facilities such as senior housing, nursing homes, and assisted living will require extra precautions to continue. This should be done regularly during flu seasons anyway. Log in, log out, sanitize hands, take temperatures and especially consider allowing school-aged children in the facilities. Remember, the initial deaths and major outbreak came to light in a nursing home in Washington State. Stockpile PPE. Make sure we have available protective garb at these facilities (health department should mandate this to the corporate level). Make the School districts use their nurses set up a program and monitor coughing, sick kids sent to school. Provide training and equipment for tracking and testing kids. This should include test kids for rapid flu as well as covid. Get these sick kids home and isolate them before they can return. Allow small businesses to reopen when they have a plan in place. Restaurants and bars need better disinfecting of their surfaces anyway. This practice should be enforced by the local health departments. Make our government entities be responsible for their duty to protect the citizenry. They are good at making rules and restrictions at our expense but lack when it comes to preparedness for crisis. Examples include no stockpiles of emergency gear, no testing capability and I could go on. Instead, these beauracracies concentrate on investigating after the fact and punishing by way of fines and public reprimand. Let’s get back to work folks, we know how to do it and we are not as stupid as those in charge think we are.