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By mid-March, there was no choice but to issue nationwide social distancing guidelines. Two weeks later, we still had no choice but to extend for another 30 days. That does not mean the virus will be defeated by April 30. Far from it.

If we want to step out of this 45-day national separation without causing a second wave of outbreak and economic loss, we must do it thoughtfully, and we better get started.

The current U.S. case count has topped 300,000 with more than 8,000 deaths.

But at some point, the horses are going to want to come out of the barn. Households, businesses, schools, and churches will need criteria, at the local level, for easing back into business, and the necessary administrative and engineering controls that need to be put in place once that next phase begins.

The experts tell us we must pursue de-escalation of social distancing at different times in different places aided by extensive testing, aggressive contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. This is no easy task.

The massive mobilization of equipment, test capacity, and people required to achieve a state-by-state, county-by-county risk weighted approach cannot start soon enough. To do it right will be the challenge of our lifetimes, and it will involve virtual armies of volunteers and experts, hopefully aided by technology and testing, and maybe even techniques we have developed in special forces warfare -- like rapid responses to new intelligence. As former Navy SEAL Chris Fussell wrote in The Atlantic, \"This war is being fought by governors, mayors, and hospitals, and they need a network that links them directly to one another, and moves as fast as the virus they are working to defeat.\"

This virus spreads directly during respiration and person-to-person contact and it spreads indirectly through contact with objects or materials that carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture. We can handle indirect transmission with cleanliness. To limit direct transmission, however, will require detective work.

On May 1, the virus will still be among us, living invisibly on surfaces and in people, like a minefield. On that day, we will not want to run blindly out of our homes into that minefield, lest we detonate a second wave of outbreak. There will be three kinds of people starting on May 1, and our job will be to sort them out, carefully and respectfully. There will be the susceptible, the infectious, and the already recovered.

Most of us will be susceptible. We will not have been infected and will not have immunities. We will be dry tinder that could easily reignite.

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Spencer Platt/Getty Images
PHOTO: A man is brought into Elmhurst Hospital in the Queens neighborhood, which has one of the highest infection rates of coronavirus in the nation, on April 03, 2020, in New York.
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Some of us will be infectious, whether we know it or not. To determine who is infectious, we need tests, and lots of them.

The remainder of us will have been infected and recovered, and therefore most certainly immune to reinfection. To identify the recovered, we need two things, an accurate list of diagnostic test results -- for those who experienced symptoms and got tested -- and a blood test to detect antibodies in people that were infected and never knew it.

This all sounds good. But, as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Dr. Anthony Fauci cautioned, we must \"examine the feasibility\" of what we want to do. In other words, let’s get real.

Good communicators in a crisis give people relevant information they can use to make decisions. The information should have value to the people, not to the institution providing it. Good leaders set objectives and help people understand what is coming. What’s coming is hard work and a long, tedious summer.

Some places will need to maintain or even increase, not just relax, social distancing in May. The U.S. is a big country and a community-based approach is appropriate. However, we have to be careful not to be overly rigid in defining communities. Some counties and even states are linked daily by commuting realities, for example. Others are barely linked at all.

To unwind in a careful, community-based fashion will require a significant surveillance capability and a common, uniform standard. In other words, a lot more tests and an agreement on who gets tested and why. Otherwise, comparisons will be based on uneven and unreliable risk measurements and the allocation of resources will be baseless. We must work together and introduce some discipline into the system.

The objective number of tests needed to identify and clear a statistically meaningful number of infectious people from the virus minefield remains unclear, and a common, responsible screening standard has not been established.

We should be wary of an approach that simply accepts the number of available tests and backs into the health surveillance we can achieve, rather than the surveillance we actually need to clear enough mines. To maximize our chances, it will soon become appropriate to test the otherwise young and healthy with mild symptoms, and not the most intractable cases. We will have to change to focus to those who are mildly ill or not sick at all, and away from the very sick.

\"PHOTO:
Karen Ducey/Getty Images
PHOTO: Chief Allan Lawson, right, and Col. Gent Welsh, both from the Washington Air National Guard, help distribute food at the Nourish Pierce County food bank set up at the Mountain View Lutheran Church on April 4, 2020 in Edgewood, Washington.
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The goal is to isolate the infectious in controlled medical facilities. Voluntary isolation and voluntary quarantine of those with whom confirmed patients have had contact is a leaky proposition.

It took four months for the world to get to 250,000 cases. It took one week to go from 250,000 cases to 500,000 cases. We are now over one million and climbing. The need to trace contacts and quickly isolate and separate the infectious from the susceptible will require organized effort, people, discipline, and perhaps smartphone apps and other ingenuity.

All of it will require time and effort to mobilize. We have less than four weeks to make decisions, decide on the plan, and get moving.

Let’s not be pleased to announce new tests or new deliveries of equipment. Instead, let’s be displeased until we can announce the plan, set it into motion, and be certain we have enough tests and equipment to meet the need.

Tom Bossert is a former homeland security adviser to President Donald Trump and an ABC News contributor.

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