How Gradual to Re-Emerge From Lockdown?

"The lockdown was never intended to be permanent, it's clearly not possible. So ideally we would like to get it down by using a vaccine, and we call that herd immunity."
"We don't have a vaccine and we're quite far from natural herd immunity and it doesn't look like we can eliminate it. So the conclusion from that is that the second wave really is a clear and present danger."
"Containment is what the U.K. was trying to do right at the beginning of this epidemic. Intensive surveillance, large-scale screening, effective contact tracing, isolation of cases, quarantining of those exposed, quarantine screening of international arrivals and some residual social distancing."
"That is a possible new normal and if we don't like [it] we're going to have to find other ways of living with COVID-19 because it's not going away any time soon."
Mark Woolhouse, University of Edinburgh

The kitchen at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel is shown in this undated handout photo. Handout photo by Oak Bay Beach Hotel

Governments are, reasonably enough, concerned about their falling GDP, the state of their economy, the skyrocketing of unemployment and how long their populations will be able to withstand lockdown conditions with no sign of a potential vaccine in the near future, and how the months of social distancing will affect people's mental health. There have been numerous displays of public discontent, with demonstrations where social distancing has been respected and participants have been face-masked, but people are demanding that social life be re-established.

The decision -- almost universally applied across the globe -- for lockdown once the global pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization had an instant impact. People lost their livelihoods, businesses closed, and the destructive consequences were seen in an expansion of clients for food bank assistance, and panicked parents hardly knowing how to care for children who could no longer attend school; mental health issues loomed large, concerning the medical profession even as local health clinics were shut along with libraries and gyms.

Barbershops outside the Montreal and Joliette areas of Quebec will be able to open as of June 1. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

While many nations -- including those hardest struck by the shock of wholesale infection rates, crowded ICUs, incapacitated hospitals with inadequate personal protective equipment for vulnerable hospital workers, and a rising death rate among the health-vulnerable and the elderly living in long-term care establishments -- began loosening restrictions that led to social distancing and orders to remain isolated at  home, there are concerns over moving too swiftly, over not opening quickly enough, over possible consequences to one or the other.

Of those countries which had already undertaken a loosening of restrictions in the hope of yet rescuing their economies from their new, dismal performance, and their populations from declining physical and mental health, an uptick in infections led to a reversal of the situation and a reimposition of some lockdown restrictions in the hopes of preventing a second, possibly even deadlier wave of COVID infections.

A situation that saw Japan, China, South Korea, Lebanon, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Pakistan reverse their decision on re-opening, forced by circumstances to return to strict restrictions on localized quarantines and in some instances, widespread shutdowns in reaction to a spurt of new infections in the restriction-loosed environment.

Close to six and a half million people globally have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Data recently released from the Office for National Statistics hint that the infection rate is most likely markedly higher reflecting that many people are asymptomatic. Dr.Hans Kluge, director of the World Health Organization's Europe desk, warned European countries that a deadly second wave is in all likelihood on the way, that now is the "time for preparation, not celebration".

Experts say lifting lockdown measures without a clear picture of where new cases are coming from, as Ontario and Quebec are doing, is cause for concern. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)