Best practices key to reopening everything

Hello from Shanghai. I bugged out of Aspen with the kids in late March to a safer place. Zero cases in this city of 26 million in the past few days. How does that work? Masks on from the moment you step out the door. Millions of tests — can test everyone in a large city within 72 hours and repeatedly thereafter. Extensive contact tracing. Zero privacy, your every step is tracked. The outcome? My kids left Aspen schools in March 25 and were back to in-person school, no distance learning, from May 4. I was at a 1,500-person business expo Saturday. Out at a happy hour in a packed restaurant yesterday. Looking forward to a busy church picnic this weekend. Taking my wife to movie theater date night on Friday.

Tell me, who has more personal freedom now? The U.S. can get on top of this. Life in new normal is just fine. Mask, always. Contact tracing, extensive. Testing, everywhere and repeated. Quarantine, get used to it (no travel, not even to Basalt, within 14 days of school restart); go to Basalt, stay out of school for 14 days again. Mom or Dad goes to Basalt or Glenwood? Kids stay home for 14 days. Nuts? Sure, but that’s what it takes. You’ll think this note is insane. That’s OK. Let’s check back in six months, you’ll get there. I have a ticket home in February 2021; I’m hopeful that enough folks will figure it out by then.

David Mitchell

Aspen