Why not Reopen the U.S. Economy?

One of the main arguments against reopening the economy are that the "spikes" or "rebounds" seen in the south and west of the U.S. might overwhelm the hospital system, which was the ostensible reason for the lockdown in March. The data does not support such a fear.

The causes for the number of cases increasing are easily understood when looking at the dynamics of the COVID epidemic in some detail, as shown in the main figure: In the North-East (e.g., New York), the number of new infections (followed by the number of new cases, green) peaked too early for the March lockdowns to "flatten the curve". The number of deaths (gray, skaled for the peaks to have the same height) followed the number of cases by about a week. Since the curve was not "flattened", herd immunity (starting at about about 25,000 new infections causing 500 cases and an additional 25,000 people with cross immunity per 100,000 people) was reached within a month and the number of cases and deaths declined thereafter in lockstep. Today, there is no more virus circulating in NYC (<1% of PCR tests are positive, which is the expected number of false positive results).

That infections are declining before or without lockdowns (in China, South Korea, many European countries and many US states) proves that effective immunity is routinely developed against SARS-CoV-2.

In the nation as a whole, the curve of the number of cases deviated from the curve of the number of deaths twice, in mid-April and mid-March (bottom left of the main Figure). Hence, the number of people who were reported as "cases" included more people who had only a milder form of COVID and would not die. A likely factor may be that testing increased and positive results began to play a larger role in the diagnosis of "cases". In the North-East, this didn't have much of an effect, because the number of new infections (and, thus, cases) had already declined dramatically. In the South and the West, however SARS-CoV-2 arrived later and, thus, the lockdown achieved its goal to "flatten the curve". Herd immunity has not yet been reached, so new cases are being diagnosed, including many with milder forms of the disease.

For California and Texas, the curves in the main Figure contain both the cases (red) and the deaths (gray). Because herd immunity has not been reached, the "flattened" curve of deaths is declining only slowly. New Mexico, Mississippi, and Georgia are close enough to herd immunity to have avoided dramatic spikes. Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina may already be close to reaching peak incidence in cases.

That "reopening" is not causing cases to "rebound" in the absence of "flattening" is also seen in Europe, where cases continue to decline irrespective of when which restrictions have been imposed (if any) or are being removed:

If the number of infections declines before the onset of lockdowns (as in China, South Korea, most European countries, and most U.S. states), the decline must be caused by the buildup of immunity.

In summary, "flattening the curve" has prolonged the time until herd immunity (and the expected number of deaths) is reached in the South and West, but this necessary process may now be slightly accelerated by "reopening". The "spikes" seen are, at least in part, caused by changes in the role of test positive results in the diagnosis of "cases".

The reason for the lockdown was ostensibly to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. This never happened in the North-East (where the curve was not "flattened") and, thus, there will be even less of a risk for this to happen in the South and East (where the curve was "flattened" and, thus, a "second wave" will be much less pronounced than the first would have been). Concerns about "second waves" in the norther hemisphere (or first waves in other parts of the World) should not be addressed with lockdowns, but with pharmacological interventions, such as the "adaptive natural vaccination", whichASDERA is developing as a formulation of alpha-cyclodextrin that is absorbed from the intestine (composition-of-matter patent pending).

There is no reason for hurting the economy and the health of the people any further by additional delays in reopening the country (We could open up again and forget the whole thing).