​ KONK Life Commentary

Guy deBoer Publisher

Can Key West & the Florida Keys reopen​ safely​?

Monroe County faces the same problem today than it did two months ago. Where are the tests?

Even though Monroe County has registered ​only ​94 infections with (3) deaths reported as of May 11, in a little more than two months, ​almost 80​,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. ​We find our local economy, which began the year very strong, is in shambles. Unemployment is rampant with the closing of the tourist industry​. Now the ​City of ​Key West and the ​Monroe County​ are​ struggling to decide how to reopen without seeing a drastic increase in COVID-19 infections.

There appears to be only one way to convince individuals that the coast is clear ahead with the reopening,​ showing​ a way to get back to work, to fix the local economy, to solve the public-health crisis, there is one way out of the mess: the country must solve the public-health crisis. To accomplish that goal, over-come the economic turmoil is to overcome the fear that going outside and mingling with people will not result in another spike in infections.

To allow the recovery to begin, the county must implement the kind of strategy that other countries have used to defeat the coronavirus. We must test widely to find the infected people; we must trace their contacts, only then can we find who might have been infected. We need to isolate the potentially infectious group from the rest of the population. Setting up this kind of infrastructure was one of the initial goals of the social-distancing measures that states and cities started in March, we must follow they’re lead here in Key West & Monroe County.

If we are to open… where are the tests?

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