South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
When will life return to normal?
Florida closed schools, restaurants, gyms, beaches to deal with COVID-19
The post-pandemic world will arrive in stages in South Florida, as restaurants reopen with fewer diners, children return to school and masks remain an uncomfortable part of our daily routine.
The timing will depend on the course of the disease, currently projected to peak in late April and then begin a monthlong decline. Only after that period do experts recommend even considering easing restrictions. And whenever that time finally comes, we can expect only a gradual return to the life we left behind, whether it’s hitting the beach, fighting traffic on I-95, sending kids to school, meeting friends for burgers or getting a paycheck.
In South Florida, elected leaders are starting to discuss how our reopening might look, in decisions that would also rest in the hands of Gov. Ron DeSantis, with guidance from President Trump.
All will face a challenge in deciding which aspects of society to reopen first and to resist pressure to do so prematurely, said Andrew Noymer, associate professor of public health at University of California Irvine. While restaurants could reopen at a reduced capacity, it could take even longer to let spectators watch baseball games or tourists flock to Disney World.
“It is going to be tricky,” Noymer said. “Stuff we took for granted before we are going to have to think very closely about now.”
Florida deaths are currently projected to peak April 26-28 with 112 people dying each day, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. After the peak, Florida would still face a long period of deaths and new infections, with overworked hospital workers and continued restrictions on daily life. The number of deaths is projected to diminish slowly, remaining higher than current levels for a month.
“You want to see consistently declining cases, not just a downtick, but really going down the other side of the mountain slope,” he said.
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said the improved Florida forecast raises the possibility of relaxing some restrictions around April 30, when the governor’s stay-at-home order is set to expire. Restaurants and bars, for example, might be allowed to reopen, with limits on the number of patrons. Another early candidate for reopening would be sections of beach.
“Everyone’s itching to get back to normal, and we all understand that,” he said. “But I have to tell you this community has really been hanging in there. Everyone realizing how important it is to maintain the stay-athome policy implemented by the state. The bell curve everyone talks about has been flattened considerably, and now experts are talking about a shorter period of time in which the restrictions could be lifted.”
A plan for lifting U.S. restrictions, prepared by a group of physicians and scientists led by a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, envisions a state-by-state resumption of normal life, with schools and businesses reopening first.
There would be a ban on groups of 50 or more, until the number of infections diminished further. Employees would be encouraged to work from home, when possible. Even then, the plan says, we should still continue the obsessive approach to personal hygiene that has become part of the new reality, with frequent hand-washing, daily disinfection of surfaces and the routine donning of masks to go out among strangers.
The plan, whose lead author, Scott Gottlieb, serves as an informal White House advisor, provides no timetable for reopening the economy. But it should not take place until several criteria are met: A sustained, twoweek reduction in new cases, the ability of hospitals to treat patients without “resorting to crisis standards of care,” an expansion of testing to cover everyone who needs one, and the ability to monitor all cases and contacts.
No one claims difficult months don’t lie ahead, and experts warn that a premature decision to lift restrictions would allow the disease to achieve a tighter grip on the country.
“I think it has to be done very cautiously,” said Mary Jo Trepka, professor of epidemiology at Florida International University, who considers the University of Washington projections to be optimistic. “We don’t have any treatments. We don’t have a vaccine. Even though numbers may come down, they could pop up at any time again.”
The pace of getting back to normal will vary across the country, said Yonatan Grad, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
“There is no one single curve being experienced by the country or the world,”
he said. “What we are seeing are local epidemics, which have staggered start times.”
Even within Florida there could be a sliding schedule for relaxing restrictions. Gov. DeSantis, for example, has talked about allowing schools to reopen in districts outside South Florida, which has taken the hardest hit from the disease.
Broward County Mayor Dale Holness said he was encouraged by the latest forecast and spoke with county a d mi n i st ra t o r Bertha Henry this week about when the county could safely consider lifting restrictions on stores, restaurants and other aspects of daily life. Restrictions have been imposed at the state, county and city level.
“We now have to see if that’s a trend and if that trend holds,” Holness said. “It would still need to be phased in so we don’t go too early and the disease rebounds. But I think we have to start thinking about how we get people back to work. This virus has caused devastation to our households, not only in health, but economic devastation.”
In Palm Beach County, there are discussions of reopening county parks in a controlled way to help home-bound residents exercise, county Mayor Dave Kerner said.
“Our constituents who are doing a great job need to have some light at the end at of the tunnel of getting out of the house and doing it safely,” Kerner said.
At this point, county leaders are still mulling whether additional restrictions are needed. Palm Beach County on Wednesday ordered car washes to close, deeming them not to be an essential business.
To reopen other parts of society, he said, leaders will need to see “consistent reductions” in new cases.
At the University of Florida, officials plan to decide by mid-July on how to organize fall classes. Among the options is a mix of online and in-person classes, depending on the student’s need for hands-on experience.
“The extent to which we can have students taking classes on the UF campus in the fall in person will depend on the course of the pandemic in Florida and the availability of rapid testing for large numbers of people,” UF spokesman Steve Orlando said. “We do not want to gather together a large number of people and re-inflame the pandemic.”
The path forward can be seen in European countries that clamped down on their economies faster than the United States and as a result are emerging from their shutdowns more quickly.
Austria, which put a stop to virtually all commerce in mid-March, when it had fewer than 1,000 cases, plans to allow small shops to open April 14 - with mandatory masks - and larger ones May 1. Restaurants, hotels and schools can resume operations later in May. Denmark will open schools next week, followed by businesses.
Florida’s stay-at-home order took effect April 1, when the state had more than 7,700 cases. Despite the brightening long-term trends, the number of deaths and new cases continue to increase.
Although there had been hopes that the outbreak would recede with the arrival of warm summer weather, scientists now say that’ s unlikely. Worse, there’s the possibility of a second wave of infections in the fall, hastened and intensified by the premature lifting of social distancing.
“What’s really important is that people don’t turn early signs of hope into releasing from the 30 days to stop the spread,” Deborah Birx, coronavirus response coordinator for the White House task force, said on NBC’s “Today.” “If people start going out again and socially interacting, we could see an acute second wave really early.”
Many desperate business owners say they don’t have the much more time to wait.
“The oxygen is running out for small businesses,” said Alex Kuk, co-owner of Temple Street Eatery in Fort Lauderdale, where the switch to takeout-only has reduced sales by 70%. “We are on life support.”
Allowing restaurants to reopen dining rooms even at a reduced capacity would provide some help, said Kuk, whose restaurant serves Asian-American “comfort food.”
“You want every square foot generating revenue and now over half of my square footage isn’t generating any revenue,” he said. “And I still have to pay rent on it.”