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One thing I find very strange is, given all the evidence about covid spread, there's not a broader public effort to establish an INDOOR/OUTDOORS safety demarcation in the public mind, and incorporate it into policy responses.
Shouldn't cities be engaged in massive programs to drive people outdoors? Closing streets for patios, installing thousands of tables and benches, generally trying to inculcate the idea that all social contact should be outside if possible?
Likewise, wouldn't that allow them to clamp down harder on the truly dangerous spaces, which are indoors spaces with AC?
This seems particularly necessary in northern cities with temperate summers and harsh winters. Leaders need to get the message across: PREPARE FOR WINTER. You need the public to be fearful of indoor socializing before the weather changes, and to steel itself for a long winter.
Maybe a little counterintuitively, encouraging people to see the outdoors as relatively safe (with masks and distancing) will also help them see the indoors as not-safe. And helping people live outside their homes now will help in the fall, when that's less and less an option.
Places that are very, very hot in the summer should be distancing more in the summer, and can stay relatively open in the winter. Places that are cold in the winter can stay relatively more open in the summer. https://twitter.com/erinnthered/status/1276531712567066625
The nice thing about hammering home the idea that INSIDE = MORE DANGEROUS is that this seasonal geographic divide arises automatically from it. You don't have to issue season-specific instructions to Floridians or Minnesotans; residents know when the good outdoor season is.
The US already has this regional dynamic - snowbirds travel south for winter, the streets of northern cities flood with people in the summer, etc. It just seems we should just be reinforcing it as strongly as possible, by emphasizing the dangers of indoor social contact.
