What do you expect to happen — what do you expect to do — once your state begins to open up?

Personally I expect little change in my life.

The wisdom of relaxing our public health strictures at all is not the subject of this post. As this site makes painfully clear, most areas of the the US should be clamping down tighter now, not relaxing. But I believe it is now a foregone conclusion that we will do the opposite, and suffer the consequences, and prolong the suffering and the dying.

Read through this Atlantic piece where the reporter talks with experts in public health about which behaviors will be safer, which more risky, and how we should individually weigh the risks against the undoubted benefits — not least to our mental health — of increasing contact with others.

The bottom line for these experts’ guidance: if you have underlying risk factors for Covid-19 going seriously bad, then continue to shelter at home; do not expand your social “bubble” beyond those you now interact with.

I won’t be eating at restaurants (when they are allowed to serve and have figured out how to do so in relative safely) (except perhaps for a windy alfresco setting). I won’t be going to coffee shops or bars; won’t be taking in concerts, performances, or movies in enclosed spaces in the company of lots of strangers. Won’t be getting on an airplane.

Here is a deeper dive into the mathematics of infection in many social situations — shopping, office work, public entertainment, worship, the beach. The author is a professor of biology at U.Mass Dartmouth. Again what I take away from this detailed look at the probabilities: what I am doing (and not doing) now is what is safest. I just don’t feel like rolling those dice.