So Gov. Newsom announced that the stay-at-home orders are being lifted. I talked to a bunch of epidemiologists to see what they were thinking about the news. Just like the public, their reactions varied widely

Some experts thought it was too soon. California has just started to turn around its numbers and it doesn't make sense to reopen things before they get lower, they said, because if there's another surge it will build upon this one that isn't over yet

UC Berkeley's Dr. John Swartzberg said that California has reopening too soon too many times.

“It’s like we’re climbing this mountain. We go two steps up and we just take one step back, and we take two steps up from there and one step back and we keep just having more cases."

Then there were some experts who thought lifting the stay-at-home orders was OK, as long as it wasn't accompanied by people droping their guard. With these reopenings, the focus should be *more* precautions, not less. Otherwise the reopenings could be disastrous

@KBibbinsDomingo: “Everything hinges on the behaviors we adopt. If we adopt behaviors where everyone is masking, everyone is keeping to distancing ... there’s a possibility for us to resume some of these activities ... “It’s not an outrageous idea."

@KBibbinsDomingo: “The concern for me ... is that it will be read, as, ‘Happy days are here again. Let's all go out, because outdoor dining is open again."

"The cases are still really high. They’re coming down, but they’re still really high.”

So basically, the lifting of the orders struck experts as a little premature, but not necessarily bad. There is a way to thread this needle and reopen more businesses without leading to a surge, but it requires the kind of messaging California has failed at so far

Telling the public that yes, more things are open, but no, you should not be changing any of your behaviors and in fact you should take even more precautions, is a very hard message to get across, but it is the only thing that will make this work, experts said

the public should pretend like nothing has changed! of course this raises the question of who will be going to the outdoor dining restaurants and nail/hair salons that are reopening, but that's an economy v. public health can of worms I'm not going to open right now

The experts also said that while there was some merit to the idea that not reopening is just delaying an inevitable surge, that argument lost a lot of steam once we got a vaccine. If we can delay another surge just by a few months, then we might avoid it all together

We wrote about California's big bet to reopen right now and what's at stake https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-26/californias-abrupt-reopening-brings-high-risks-but-also-potential-for-high-rewards