This is exactly the problem. There are way too many people looking at this as black and white. There are not just 2 options, do nothing and full lockdowns until there is a vaccine. There’s a huge grey area in between. As you say, from the start the plan was always to re-open as cases allowed but to ramp up and down as the situation allowed. Once the re-opening occurred this rally cry of “we will never lock down again“ emerged and now any form of pulling back is treated like a return to full lockdowns (which we never actually had, but different argument).
The thing that’s ironic is this article about CA states that people are rebelling against restrictions because the state never opened in the summer when numbers got better, but that’s really not true. It’s a nice talking point but not accurate. In May/June CA bars and restaurants were open including indoor dining. Gyms, barber shops, all retail, schools, etc were all open. Really theme parks and sports stadiums were the major things that never opened. So this narrative that people would accept the restrictions more now if things opened more earlier is just that, a political talking point. CA = liberal = blue state, so there’s a push to label it as being “the most restrictive” but that wasn’t totally true. More restrictive than some places and less than others. This summer CA was way more open than NJ or NYC.
The biggest problem I see is people wanting to have a linear timeline on the pandemic. Like a movie plot they want a progression form one stage to the next. The reality is this is a fluid situation so there needs to be ebbs and flows. It also takes time for things to have an impact so if cases didn’t spike the day or week after Thanksgiving that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a Thanksgiving spike. It takes time. So do the impacts from adding back restrictions. CA implemented their return to stay at home orders and people keep wondering why their cases didn’t flatline. It takes time. It’s been 3 weeks now, but it takes that long to start to see impacts. The other issue is that people are comparing the wrong things. You need to compare CA today to where it would be without those restrictions added 3 weeks ago. It’s impossible to do that, but it’s also impossible to say the restrictions aren’t doing anything too. Even though the cases look bad they could have been worse. We don’t know exactly how much worse, but we know that less people interacting means less cases so it has to be doing something.
One final point, as the vaccines roll out and things get better people need to have a little patience. This dangerous notion that there can be some set, drop dead date where the switch gets flipped is a bad setup for further confusion and delay in a return to normal. We had a goal of vaccinating 20M people by the end of 2020. That’s not going to happen now. We are only a few weeks behind, but the point is these timelines cannot be held as absolutes. When Joe Biden says wear a mask for 100 days he doesn’t mean it’s definitely not going to be needed by May 1. I don‘t believe he meant that and haven’t seen a whole lot of talk along those lines but people need to stay flexible. Maybe we get there by May 1, maybe it’s July 1 and maybe it’s October 1 (hopefully not). Setting up expectations that it’s set in stone to be May 1 is only adding to our problems, not helping at all.
