Former Gov. Leavitt posited that Utah’s approach to reopening should be akin to walking on thin ice — that is, we should inch forward slowly, rather than run forward carelessly and risk plunging into freezing water.
While the sentiment is right, that analogy may be a little imprecise — after all, there is an up-to-14-day delay between when a person is infected with this coronavirus and when they first present symptoms. So, you can’t evaluate a public health policy’s effectiveness on the day it is implemented — you have to wait a few weeks. While it’s true that we are walking on thin ice, we can only sense under our feet now what the ice was like two weeks ago.
We stepped onto the ice on May 1 when Gov. Herbert shifted Utah into an “orange” risk phase. Utah’s incidence of COVID-19 began to finally decline a week later on May 9. That decline, however, reflects the policy of a few weeks earlier when Utah was still using “red” risk phase precautions — it does not necessarily show that the one-week-old orange phase is working.
Today, Utah’s incidence rate is still reflective of the orange phase’s early days. It remains unknown whether the rate of new cases will continue to fall or, due to the orange phase’s loosened rules, begin to climb again. We should still be inching forward on the ice, hoping that a crack we might have unwittingly created two weeks ago doesn’t suddenly appear under our feet.
Yet, Gov. Herbert has decided to not wait to see if the orange phase was too much, too soon. Most of Utah will move this Saturday into the “yellow” risk phase.
For our community’s sake, let’s hope we get lucky as we attempt to run on thin ice.
Connor Morgan, Salt Lake City
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