Janelle Irwin Taylor
Former St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker has suggestions for government officials as they begin thinking about returning to some semblance of normalcy when the threat of COVID-19 begins lessening.
Responding to President Donald Trump’s plan to convene a Reopening Council, Baker wrote an op-ed for the Illinois-based Sagamore Institute of which he is a senior fellow. The institute is a policy think tank launched by former Trump administration Director of National Intelligence.
Baker’s recommendations include an integrated return to normalcy. In the immediate term, Baker recommends continuing and accelerating “the massive deployment of COVID-19 tests so we can accurately identify and isolate all who have the virus.” That, Baker wrote, should be done “both now and in the future.”
Likewise, Baker calls for increased development and deployment of antibody testing that would allow health care workers to identify who has already had the virus. Those individuals likely would be immune to the disease.
He also recommends protecting the health care system, and deploying the use of therapeutics.
Baker’s plan calls for a staged return from isolation in which regions would continue testing, protect the vulnerable with continued strict social distancing guidelines and implement reduced social distancing requirements for others.
“Consider masks, gloves, testing of individuals for oxygen level and temperature. Consider the levels of gatherings that are appropriate,” Baker wrote. “Consider continued international travel restrictions – should domestic travelers be screened in any way? All of this is subject to the continued progress in the vaccine and therapeutics efforts, which can change everything.”
Baker’s op-ed does not touch on timing. However he notes, in similar fashion to Trump, that the nation simply cannot just cease to operate for the longterm.
“Our churches have been closed for Easter, our individual rights to assemble and gather have been curtailed by edict and our nation’s economy has been brought to its knees,” Baker writes.
“These impacts of America’s self-isolation, so long as they are temporary, may prove to have been worth it if we have succeeded in delaying the spread while our health system ramps up capacity.”
“But we can’t stay home forever,” he adds.
