A disconcerting patchwork of openings and new rules of remoteness for restaurants, business offices, churches, dental offices and even gymnasiums in some places will allow commerce to resume daily - whether workers and customers are ready or not.
On Thursday evening, the country's leading infectious disease expert warned states not to stray too far from White House guidelines. "The discretion is given to the governors. They know their states, the mayors know their cities, so you want to give them a little leeway. But my recommendation is, you know, don't stir too much," said Dr. Anthony Fauci at CNN's world mayor on coronaviruses.
The impetus for prying open restaurants, businesses and stores takes place despite the Trump administration's failure to build a comprehensive testing network capable of testing millions of people per week, which, according to epidemiologists, is essential to stop a resurgence of the new coronavirus.
This makes Friday and the next few weeks a disheartening moment as the country waits to see if the opening triggers a second wave of infections that escapes all control.
If so, Americans could face the prospect of a return to home orders that could destroy an already crumbling economy with more than 30 million people unemployed.
President Donald Trump, however, is anxious to leave Washington to make up for lost time in his re-election campaign, after saying on Thursday that his erratic and avenging leadership in times of national crisis had been a "spectacular" success.
He plans to travel to the swing state of Arizona next week - even at the cost of vanity if he has to cover his face.
"Should I speak in a mask? You will have to tell me if it is politically correct," the president told reporters on Thursday.
State reopenings are a sign of progress, but their staggered nature is also a sign of how far the country needs to go to overcome the pandemic.
"Things are improving and we can gradually resume certain activities," Thomas Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Thursday during a forum at the Aspen Institute.
"On the other hand, we're coming back, not normal, we're going to go back to a new normal. And that will include physical distance, hand sanitizer, face masks and avoidance ... big gatherings where many people meet in one place, "he said.
Yet Frieden warned that the longer fight against the pandemic, which he described as the worst threat to public health in 100 years, "has only just begun".
A pandemic does not respect state boundaries, and there is a good chance that states taking a risk by opening up could possibly make things worse for everyone else.
A mixed picture of wide openings and restrictions
In a sense, the staged overtures represent federalism at work - as local power in the states of a vast country is applied to local circumstances without direction from a distant government in Washington.
States like Texas, West Virginia, Utah, Arkansas and Georgia are heading for various stages of reopening in the coming days. Others such as Ohio, where Governor Mike DeWine passed more slowly to rave reviews, Arizona and Minnesota prolonged the blockages. Restrictions on Michigan pushed protesters, including some armed, into the state capitol on Thursday. And New York, New Jersey and California remain frozen in a cycle of death - even if their pandemics have stabilized. A growing threat to the country's food supply and some of its most vulnerable workers is worsening in the meantime, as more meat processing plants have reported massive staff infections.
Yet in the midst of the tragedy, small pockets of hope open across the country. The hospital ship USNS Comfort, dispatched to assist New York in its darkest hour, slipped her berth and headed for the Atlantic on her return trip to Virginia. The NASCAR racing series and horse racing on Churchill Downs in Kentucky are expected to resume in a few weeks - but without spectators. Golfers will soon return to Dallas.
When states open, governors, mayors and community leaders will be responsible for life and death decisions related to a vicious virus, with no proven cure or vaccine still at large.
In many ways, that is how the American system of government - and the deep-seated suspicion of federal authority - should be.
But the big unknown is how the public, whose polls show they are still deeply reluctant to come outside, will react. This reluctance is one of the reasons - with regulations such as a dramatic reduction in restaurant capacity - why the booming economic recovery the president expects is unlikely to happen, at least initially.
State openings hint at lack of national strategy
The jumble of conflicting restrictions, orders for on-site shelters, partial openings and layoffs of companies also reflects the complete absence of a coherent national strategy against the pandemic.
Trump has made it clear that he considers it incumbent on states to step up testing and provide protective equipment to their hospitals while putting the country back online.
The federal government should just be a backup, he says.
This attitude, and Trump's botched call that the virus would never threaten the United States, have exacerbated the pandemic in the United States, which has killed more than 60,000 Americans and infected more than a million in just a few months.
It has forced states to compete, the federal government and foreign countries for personal protective equipment for front-line doctors and nurses, for example.
And that led to the extraordinary spectacle of Republican Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, who ordered state police and the National Guard to protect the coronavirus testing kits he had imported from South Korea - including of the federal government.
Washington's lack of effective leadership has convinced some states - northeast, Midwest and Pacific Coast - to come together to coordinate on issues such as when to open up and negotiate with the federal government .
Trump becomes less relevant
In many ways, the open-ended effort by the states puts aside the president and makes his daily statements and contradictions less relevant and a highlight of the main act.
If his re-election depends on a revived economy, his fate may be in the hands of state governors, including Republicans who jumped on his encouragement to open up.
But Trump can also benefit politically from the arm's length approach, which coincides with the end of his untamed daily briefings which, according to his collaborators, hinder his chances of re-election.
If the states are doing well and the infections do not suddenly peak again, the president will be sure to claim a share of the credit. If the reopenings are a disaster, Trump will at least have some distance from the individual decisions of heads of state - even if the country will remember his pressure to make things happen again.
Trump's canceled daily briefings this week also meant less visibility for senior public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, whose science-based prudence sometimes hurt his favorite narrative of a light at the end of the tunnel.
But the absence of a coordinated federal effort considerably increases the risk of disparate openings of the state and could ultimately slow the country's exit from the crisis.
"If we are to deal with this, we will need a comprehensive strategy. This strategy means that we protect health care, we strengthen public health, we design elements of society, so that we can reopen and resume and recover as quickly as possible without rebounding in the cases, "said Frieden.
"We need a comprehensive strategy," he said, referring to an objective that may be too much to hope for from a chaotic administration that is more interested in claiming undeserved credit for its management of the pandemic than " to develop new plans.
"I think I managed it - and not me; I think our whole group was spectacular," Trump said Thursday, noting in particular the non-emergence of a previously feared respirator shortage.
A scenario in which many states are open and others are not will intensify the next massive political struggle in Washington - how to save the state governments of income-deprived states following calls from governor's mansions inhabited by both Democrats and republicans.
"It turns out that these are democratic states. It's California, it's New York, it's Illinois, you start with these three. And the republican states are in great shape. You know, I don't know, is it luck or talent? is it just a different mindset? "Said Trump.
