When you think of the size of the hole already punched in our economy, it's staggering. And it's going to get much worse.
For a tiny fraction of that amount of money, we could have gotten in front of this thing by manufacturing test kits by the bajillions, and hiring and training thousands of people to track down anyone who'd had contact with people who came down with the disease. That's how highly contagious diseases with no treatments (like Ebola) are handled, and it's very effective. Shutting down the economy is just a sledge-hammer approach that hurts everyone.
Of course hindsight is a lot better. We are just buying time, which could help quite a bit for the medical stuff to catch up, so we do not make the same mistakes as Italy which now has more CV related deaths than China. And it's mainly because they have to decide who lives and who dies with their lack of medical equipment as an outbreak like that wasn't expected. They were not ready for it. We do not want to make the same mistake and be another Italy.
Being shut down for a month is better than what is now happening in Italy, but yeah, sooner would have been better. But what we are doing now, even if late, is better than becoming another Italy, where they are having a serious problem now with what to do with all their dead. They have ran out of room for their dead.
So we have to choose between the best of two very large evils, while we may still have some time. BTW, click on the link below about what is happening here tomorrow with almost no advance notice. But the panic was doing about the same anyway. The very first CV death in CA happened in this county.
-Don-
Auburn, CA