May 1, 2020: Lockdown Fatigue and Dreams of Reopening

Weighing the benefits of confronting the virus vs. the terrible dynamics of nonlinear spread

It’s the first of May, and the Bay Area has now been under a lockdown order for a bit under a month and a half. April was the first full month under lockdown, with almost no normal activities allowed — getting together with friends, dining out at a restaurant, going to the pool, etc.

Basically, there are only a few options for entertainment and recreation at the moment — go to a park near your house, get takeout food from a restaurant, or do any number of activities (hobbies, video calls, working out, etc.) at home.

On the last item, people have been getting more and more creative. Lots of businesses are now offering at-home versions of their normal services — remote Gymboree classes for kids, remote school (both for younger kids and high schoolers and middle schoolers), remote workouts and training from gyms, remote paint nights and other entertainment options, and more.

Big companies have gotten in on this, too. I read that box office revenues in the United States plunged to under $10,000 as basically all movie theaters are closed. This is staggering, since normally this number would be in the hundreds of millions. So big…