@aygart I hate to say it but he’s right. We keep hearing whining about how strict we were and for now long but in reality we were far *less* strict than many other places who are still managing to halt ois. Unfortunately it says more about what our community is willing and able to tolerate.. the term snowflake comes to mind.
It’s also quite presumptious to say the Rabbanim allowed opening up too late. The hospitals were overwhelmed, understaffed, and deficient in knowledge throughout April and there’s every reason to believe that the people currently being infected would have suffered far worse back then, because there were *many* active ongoing cases through April.
For the record, I think Bergen restarted minyanim too late in retrospect. However, the idea was to wait to see the beginning of the state reopening (outdoor dining, memorial day trips etc), and wait 2 weeks off that to check for a spike. Since it was fine after that, we got the green light for limited minyanim (to ensure that the minyanim themselves were safe), followed by a gradual resumption of indoor davening at some shuls (with masks and distancing).
It's not perfect, and there's still a lot of breaches of protocols going on, but so far, it's mostly holding everything together. Schools is another story.
I do think running any minyanim when hospitals were overrun was a mistake in the communities that decided to do it, because the consequence of a single additional case was magnified.
My opinion is the goal of total shutdowns are to help the medical system, but the goal of social distancing and mask wearing is to protect the population until there's a vaccine. I think those 2 get conflated, and that leads to a misapplication of precautionary measures.