HERE’S THE REOPENING PLAN for Knoxville and Knox County.

And note this bit of realism:

Through the joint effort of citizens in “flattening the curve,” the number of active COVID-19 cases has stayed far below the capacity of the health care system.This has provided the region with time to increase supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE), hospital surge capacity, testing capacity and the ability to surge contact tracing should it be needed and appropriate. As we locally advance through the phases, we anticipate an increase in active cases at each phase due to the low number of initial active cases. The focus of the benchmarks outlined in this document is on assessing the local ability to manage an increase in cases while preventing the unobstructed growth of transmission. Our low initial active case counts will likely mean we will not obtain a downward trend throughout the phases of the reopening process. Our community demonstrated success in flattening the curve before it truly started. Due to this initial success, future phases will result in increased numbers of active case counts. This alone is not a reason to revert to a previous phase or not advance to the next phase.

That seems sound. I should note that even though they have different parties and different philosophical orientations, it’s nice to see that Knoxville City Mayor Indya Kincannon and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs have worked together well on this. That hasn’t been the place in some other metro areas in Tennessee.