Dr. Mihaljevic acknowledges the necessity of the lockdowns to contain the virus, along with the urgent need for ramped-up testing and ongoing monitoring. But, he adds, “we cannot hold our breath forever.” The U.S. will not soon be able to test 330 million people. Effective therapies or vaccines may be long in coming. Covid-19 will be “a disease we have to learn to live with.”

That means accepting that the immediate goal of public policy cannot be to eliminate the risk of Covid-19. It is to mitigate, manage and frame expectations for it — while not losing sight of other priorities. In Ohio Dr. Mihaljevic says that Covid patients take up just 2 percent of hospital capacity, and the curve of new infections has been flat for more than two weeks. Yet there has been a dramatic decline in people seeking care for heart attacks, strokes, or new cancers, presumably out of fear of going to hospital.

“The public conversation needs to be about the value of human life in its totality,” Dr. Mihaljevic says. That includes fewer restrictions on activity for people at the low end of the risk spectrum, while taking additional care of those on the high end.

Right now, there’s a lot of commentary coming from talking heads (many of them in New York) about the danger of lifting lockdowns in places like Tennessee. Perhaps the commentary needs to move in the opposite direction. Tennesseeans are within their rights to return to a semblance of normal life while demanding longer restrictions on New Yorkers.

I write this from New York, so it’s an argument against my personal interest. But I don’t see why people living in a Nashville suburb should not be allowed to return to their jobs because people like me choose to live, travel and work in urban sardine cans.

Gina Raimondo, the Rhode Island governor, was on to something when, a few weeks ago, she wanted to quarantine drivers arriving from New York. The rest of America needs to get back to life. We New Yorkers prefer our own company, anyway.

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