Homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem spoke with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday about plans to reopen the country.
"Opening up is a series of policies, but the president has been successful in making the choice seem binary — either opening up or stuck inside forever," she said. "The truth is, as we certainly know from Gov. Charlie Baker's plans, is that it will take a tiered response."
Baker's plan to reopen up Massachusetts reimagines what the new normal will be like, Kayyem noted. "Its baseline is the following: Our lives will be different, soical distancing is the norm, masking is an absolute, and we'll have to try to mitigate going into the workplace," she said. "So our default has switched now, and the world that we're going to live in is 180 degrees different."
Massachusetts' first phase of reopening is scheduled to begin on Monday, she added.
"The numbers are looking better in Massachusetts, and maybe we'll be confident enough by Monday that we begin the slow process of opening up," Kayyem said. "But it's not opening up in the way the president would have you believe."
Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
