I'll throw it out there. It's going to sound crazy and sensational.

Taken to extreme, this issue has the potential to escalate to civil war. People are passionate about it and the consequences are high.

Here's the thinking: Imagine if ideological forces of both political parties coalesce into two camps - one is the remain in place to prevent spread. the other to get the economy open asap, despite potential deaths because it's the lesser of two evils.

Disagreements increase and carry on until the election in November. At that time, whichever side loses decides to ignore the results of the election and take matters into their own hands to rectify what they see as a critical situation the other side is unconscionably mishandling. Then, resulting physical altercations at places of business that escalate.

Sounds far fetched. The reason it crossed my mind is because we are talking about literal life and death decisions. The one side thinks that if the other side opens the economy, they will in essence be condemning hundred of thousands of their constituents and compatriots to death. The other side thinks that if opposition hinders the re-opening it will destroy the economy resulting in multiples of the deaths and misery than originally caused by the pandemic.

To generalize, let me suggest that left leaning people favor delaying economic reopening and continuing mitigation efforts and right leaning people favor reopening the economy as soon as possible.

I would be interested in hearing from people that do not fall into one of those camps (ie, a left leaner that thinks we should reopen asap or a right leaner that thinks we need to wait).

It seems like this issue is too important to let it be hashed out in the context of partisanship. Let me know if you think it's just a weird thought.