Needed: Competence, Humility, Honesty

If announcing an arbitrary date to withdraw from a theater of war -- a date divorced from realities on the ground -- is a bad idea, how much worse an idea is announcing an arbitrary date to "reopen the economy?" In this case the date will be divorced from the reality that many infection rates in parts of the country have yet to peak, and that respiratory disease epidemics have a nasty tendency to rebound, even when we do things right. 

Because we have not been able to test a statistically significant  asymptomatic population, we don't know what the disease burden in the population. This is an epidemiological problem and knowing "n" is an important piece of the puzzle. Without it you don't know infection rates or case fatality rates and you can't do contact tracing and management. Without that knowledge you will guarantee an already likely rebound within weeks of "reopening."

This isn't about politics. It isn't about left or right, Democrat or Republican, or whether you approve of Trump or not.  It's about competence and the humility to listen to experts over your friends and political allies.