I mean...tough times call for tough choices. One big problem with this virus is we just don't know a lot about it. We might get some studies that get published with some factoid that it lives on surfaces for 2 hours, then 8 hours, then 14 days, but again we're in the early stages of gathering knowledge on this disease. Most diseases we've had years to study them in the medical community. But people like to know things, so when a study comes out people in the media often parade it as fact, when we all know we can get biased studies out that say a lot of things. Some people can really abuse their "authority" and present themselves as somehow knowing more than other people.
Example, back in early March someone I know who is a nurse tried to tell me that covid was "nothing to worry about" and that I should really be concerned about measles coming back (measles is a scary as fuck disease though, we just happen to have like a vaccine for it.) "It (covid) can't live outside a human host for more than 2 hours." Right as she was telling me this I couldn't help but think that there's no way she could know this shit, the disease is too new for anyone to be certain of this crap, but her family and friends probably trust all that she says as fact because she's in the medical field.
As far as policy goes, this not knowing is really daunting. We can't even get politicians to agree on things when they know the consequences of the policies they're trying to enact. Most people probably agree that the virus is more contagious and less lethal than the reported case death rates, but the magnitudes of which are still unknown. Even so, what are we up to 45,000 dead (USA) even with all the social distancing, most schools canceled, almost no one flying, large gatherings canceled, people washing hands like crazy and wearing masks. We don't even know how long previous people who have been infected will have sufficient antibodies to fight off a future infection, so maybe herd immunity might not be a great strategy. Maybe this will be a new seasonal flu type thing trying to guess what the right strands are.
Back to Blackbellamy's previous post, it's kind of like that but even those scenarios proposed are only possible scenarios. 100,000 dead, but is that with or without social distancing? Without mass gatherings? The unemployment one, did they attempt to isolate if that was the case with what may possibly only be temporary unemployment? I mean the only 20/20 vision we have is looking back, and we'll probably get some decent control groups (like Brazil) to see how the responses to this virus fared versus others.
There's so many different variables here to work through it's tough, the biggest one is people. Some people look at this virus and think "well if there's no one telling me I can't do things it's probably fine." For example when the social distancing guidelines came out without the orders, many parks were crowded as all hell. But then those same people when mandated to stay home might think "fuck this bullshit you can't tell me what to do, this is America."
Honestly I'm no epidemiologist or any kind of expert, but my opinion on what was going to happen in the states was that 1) the spread wouldn't be quite as explosive as in Italy due to a younger age, people more spread out, not as many smokers, not as touchy feely culture, and we banned large gatherings about the same time as them so earlier in the spread relatively speaking. I do think it will be more prolonged though, due to it reaching places a little slower, minimal social safety net for people losing jobs, people not wanting to go to the hospital because of the exorbitant costs, doctors and nurses getting laid off, people over their heads in debt, and a good chunk of the population just won't want to listen to extended social distancing guidelines or orders.
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