BY MARTIN KICH

Writing for Politico, Juan Perez has reported the results of a poll conducted by the magazine in collaboration with Morning Consult:

Forty-one percent of Americans said it’s a bad idea to reopen K-12 schools in the fall, concluded the online survey of close to 2,000 registered voters, while 44 percent felt it was a bad idea to open day care centers. At the same time, the numbers show about a third of voters think it’s a good idea for children to resume in-person classes or go back to child care.

But when it comes to colleges and universities, voters are evenly split — 38 percent said a return to campus was a good idea and the same percentage said it’s a bad idea, while roughly a quarter had no opinion.

Obviously, the catchphrase about the polling on the presidential election applies here: the results should be of interest, but it’s much too early to attach much meaning to them. Obviously, there is a great deal of uncertainty not just about what is likely to happen in the fall but also about what is likely to happen between now and the fall.

In fact, I am not even sure how a sudden spike in confirmed cases and deaths early in the summer (whether one wishes to call it the end of the first surge or a second surge) would impact feelings about on-site classes in the fall: on the one hand, it might heighten current fears about the risks, but, on the other hand, it might make people believe that the universally predicted recurrence in the fall and winter is less likely to occur.

I am working on a more extensive post on the issues related to the meaning of the statistics related to this pandemic—not how they ought to be understood from a scientific point of view, which is well beyond any expertise that I have, but how they are being reported and, in the process, being filtered through political agendas and affecting attitudes toward public health and science.

But, in the meantime, I would like to highlight several recent news items related to data that has consistently been at the center of the discussion.

First, writing for the Washington Post, Lenny Bernstein and Alauna Safarpour have reported on the results of a survey conducted by the newspaper in collaboration with IPSOS. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Front-line health-care workers still experienced shortages of critical equipment needed for protection from the coronavirus into early May — including nearly two-thirds who cited insufficient supplies of the face masks that filter out most airborne particles, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

More than 4 in 10 also saw shortages of less protective surgical masks and 36 percent said their supply of hand sanitizer was running low, according to the poll. Roughly 8 in 10 reported wearing one mask for an entire shift, and more than 7 in 10 had to wear the same mask more than once.

Although I was very aware of the extended shortages of PPE for healthcare workers, I thought that they had finally been addressed. That they clearly have not been is baffling and disheartening.

Second, writing for The Hill, Alicia Cohn and Justine Coleman have provided a succinct overview of where the states fall in terms of the great “re-opening.” They have divided the states into three categories: mostly open, 23; partially open, 24 states; and mostly closed, 3 states and the District of Columbia. For each state, there is a concise summary of what is open, will soon be open, or is not yet opening: for instance, for my state–“Ohio allowed retail businesses to reopen with restrictions on May 13. Salons and outdoor dining reopened on May 15. Dine-in services were allowed to resume, and campgrounds reopen May 21, gyms May 26 and child care services May 31.”

I have seen any numbers of maps such as the one below that accompanies this articles but nothing as detailed—or as accessibly detailed—as this article:

Lastly, if the availability of adequate PPE has been an ongoing issue, the availability of adequate testing is likely to remain one for an even longer time. But, I did find a chart as helpful as the previous article in The Hill on “re-opening.” The chart is part of a report of about a dozen pages prepared by Castlight on how the use of retail sites such as Walmart and CVS can fill “testing deserts” across the country. The chart provides the best summary that I have seen of how many testing sites are in each state, how well they are distributed across the counties in each state, and how close the state has come to having the number of testing sites deemed necessary by the CDC.