Since then, we’ve learned a lot about what works and doesn’t, and can apply those lessons accordingly - keeping outdoor spaces like parks open, for example. This doesn’t mean locking down in the same way many places did in the spring. But for this to work, it has to be much more common - so it becomes more likely the entire country can stop the spread. Some places are already taking steps in this direction, like New Mexico, Oregon, Chicago, and El Paso, Texas. That means temporarily shuttering in-person, indoor services at nonessential businesses, particularly bars and restaurants restricting larger gatherings, including in private homes and encouraging, or outright mandating, people to stay home as much as possible - only going out for food, work, exercise, health care, and other basics needs - and limit their social interactions to their own households. With the milder measures failing us, it’s clear what needs to happen: To avert possibly hundreds of thousands of deaths in the months before a vaccine becomes widely available, the US needs to close down once again. The country is hitting records before experts believe Covid-19 cases stand to shoot up even further. It’s also largely before colder weather in most of the US pushes people into poorly ventilated indoor spaces where the virus has an easier time spreading. The coronavirus’s explosive growth has occurred before Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s are set to bring friends and family together in large gatherings that could turn into superspreading events. “This is the worst we’ve seen it,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist, told me. That’ll make it much harder to respond to outbreaks, as states dealing with their own crises won’t be able to, as they did in the spring and summer, send reinforcements of doctors and nurses to support other places. And some states now breach 100 daily new cases per 100,000 - which was unthinkable months ago. It’s truly national: Every state now has more than four daily new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people, the standard for having Covid-19 under control. Unlike the spring outbreak, the current disaster isn’t isolated to the New York City area and a few other states. And deaths are climbing: now above 1,000 a day once again, with a growing likelihood that the country will surpass 2,000 or even 3,000 a day in the coming weeks and months - on top of the more than 246,000 Covid-19 deaths that America has seen so far. Hospitalizations have skyrocketed to their highest level of the pandemic, leaving a growing number of hospitals around the US, from Arizona and Texas to Ohio and Tennessee, nearing or at capacity. The US surpassed 100,000 daily new coronavirus cases on November 4, and it’s gone on to regularly break new records for coronavirus cases since then - with the most recent high exceeding 180,000 on Friday. Six months after spring shutdowns ended, the answer is clear: The milder approach isn’t working. The past few months have been an American experiment with Covid-19: Can the country keep bars, restaurants, gyms, and other businesses open while fighting the virus with milder measures, including some social distancing and widespread masking?
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