> I think it's pretty clear that many states are opening too fast too early

Not at all.. I think it's clear we locked down way too fast (and I was supportive of the initial lockdowns). At the time, we thought that -- even with the lockdown -- we would overwhelm the hospital systems in many parts of the country. Guess what... that didn't really happen. We didn't run out of ventilators at all. That means we over reacted. Now it's time to lower the restrictions with the new constants in mind, so that any subsequent peak more completely uses excess capacity, and more people can get back to work.

I'm a little confused. You think because the system was not overwhelmed, the US locked down too early? The point of the lockdown was to prevent getting overwhelmed, which appears to have mostly worked.

I guess I'm having hard time understanding the logic where since the system wasn't overwhelmed with a lockdown in place, there was no need for a lockdown.

I agree the point of lockdown was to prevent getting overwhelmed and without it we would have had some regions with overwhelmed systems.

However, we more than met that. Not only were hospitals not overwhelmed, many hospitals had such little work that they ceased operations.

That means we clearly overreacted, at least in those areas. Now, it's time to loosen up, and let all those hospitals that literally had so few patients they were closing down to have a reason to exist.

For example, California locked down early -- good for them! But their ICUs were not anywhere near capacity. They've now had a month to expand capacity, which they've done. That means they can handle more sick people. California should think about opening up a little, and then, as some get sick with COVID and need ICU care, we can be assured there will be ICU space. We have better numbers now and can run a model that ensures ICUs run at or near capacity so that more people can be at work while everyone can be assured there is an ICU bed should they need it.

What I don't understand is your perspective. It is clear we had excess ICU capacity during the lockdown. Doesn't that mean we wasted resources in getting to herd immunity. The point of a lockdown is to 'flatten the curve', not make the virus go extinct (which is all but a pipe dream at this point). We cannot get herd immunity unless more people get it. The danger in letting everyone get it at once is that we run out of ICU beds. The danger in locking down too hard is that we have excess ICU beds that could have been used to get us to herd immunity faster. We had a lot of excess ICU beds in the country. That means we wasted time. That's okay -- we had information at the time we now know was not 100% correct. Let's adjust the models and continue on.