Just two comments Chris. The first relates to the poll you cite, in particular this question;
"Which comes closest to your point of view: the country should reopen quickly, even if it makes the spread of the coronavirus worse; or the country should reopen slowly, even if it makes the economy worse?"
This is a blatantly biased question. Consider the underlying, bottom line query. Do you want to make your health worse or are you willing to take a financial hit?" Essentially everyone puts their health, and that of their families first. Thus the pre-polling estimate of response would be biased toward "no, I don't want to make my health worse." The bias is found in the polarity of the questions choices.
Loose terminology: Reopen quickly is an undefined rate, versus reopen slowly, also an undefined rate. They define two polar opposites with no middle ground. Also, quickly and slowly mean different things to different people.
In reality, different regions of the country will open at different paces and those paces are / will be evaluated based on local leadership. The Democrat lead states have been slower to embrace reopening even without data to support that perspective.
Second, it is well known that Democrats feared loosing to Trump even before the pandemic came along. The economy was booming, employment was at record levels, the Russian hoax was proven to be a hoax and was now showing signs of blowing up in their faces, Bernie was scaring the crap out of them and Joe was having episodes of cognitive collapse. That is a political reality, and denying it is pointless.
Finally, there is a reason they're called "opinion polls". There is also a reason why there are so many. The reason is that if you poll a select population with questions that are ill-defined and polar in choice and / or consequence you can get an almost predetermined outcome. It's like political masturbation, it feels good but means nothing. That is, at least in part, why the majority of the polls leading into the 2016 election were so wrong. They asking questions that supported their predetermined perspective and sold all that to political parties and media outlets who were looking for that conclusion. "Would you like them to like red hair or blond?"
I can tell you from a real world perspective here in California that the need to shut down the whole state was never there. Many of our rural counties had no or very few cases of C19. Even in Santa Clara county with it's 2 million inhabitants, we had only 146 deaths, related to C19. In the week of Feb 23 - 29 Santa Clara county reported 7 deaths in people under 65, and (surprisingly) don't keep records for such deaths in people over 65; the obvious highest risk population. That would suggest we would expect at least 350 deaths per year in Santa Clara County just from the usual season flew.
Even in our urban areas the numbers did not come anywhere near to boogieman level being promoted. Not that any death is something that should be avoided when possible, but death is a consequence of life and living. In 2017 (CDC.gov) about 1.8 million Americans died from chronic disease like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's. 170,000 died from accidents. About 55,000 died of the "traditional" influenza.
On top of all that, CDC attributes death related to cigarette smoking at 480,000 per year. This is well established, highly risky behavior, and much more certain than risk from C19, yet we don't shut down the economy to prevent those deaths. People still choose that behavior even though it is so strongly connected tot heir probable demise.
These are all horrible things that we need to work on to minimize as much as possible. Many of them are known to be preventable. We do not shut down our economy to save people from them however. We do the best we can to minimize their impact.
There is no data that says we should not reopen our economy and let people reclaim their livelihoods and their lives. Yet it remains in the best political interest of Democrats to delay that, and the obvious economic rebound that will represent. If you don't believe me, ask Nancy Pelosi. She has had conversations with her top Democrat associates about that, you can be sure.
Just sayin....
