BTW, most all economists keep pointing the finger back at fixing the public health crisis to fix the economic problems, whatever their political stripes: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/sa...
But we have no coherent plans to do much about the public health crisis at a national level, and the president is busy tweeting out anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories.
It sucks it's come to this, but all of the states with lock-downs are desperately looking at states easing restrictions to see if these shelter in place orders are really worth it. We've heard that many of the people in NYC getting infected now are getting infected at home.
I'm really hoping that Texas and Georgia, as they slowly open up, do not go over hospital capacities. We already know a number of people haven't gone to hospitals when they needed to; as many cut off access in preparation for a surge that never came. It's equally likely these states may not see a surge at all, even post re-opening.
Yes, a lot of people may still die, but this virus is in the environment. A lot of those people would die either now, or six months from now. I don't understand how people can think complete eradication is even possible. You can't limit people's social contact forever. We are not laptops that can be placed on standby for a year or gears in a machine that can be stopped and oiled.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at, but there is a recent study showing that COVID cases correlate well with commuting in NYC - it's not the case that people who stay at home are getting infected just as much:
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42665370
(this site is down for me right now, but it was working earlier when i looked at the paper!)
Maybe. But probably not. The fact that this decision is being made with zero preparation is terrifying. There is no PPE generally available. There are no contact tracing programs in place. There has been effectively zero federal response or any form of coherent strategy released. Hell, you can't even buy hand sanitizer in the stores again yet. Of course we can't live in isolation forever. But absolutely nothing has been done to make reopening any safer than we were two months ago. And saying "welp, let's hope it just goes away", with no safety measures in place, is going to mean hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Eradication, to the point that contract tracing is a viable containment method, has been achieved by other countries. It is completely possible.
South Kora, New Zealand, etc where they are going for complete elimination. Now ask yourself this ... when will South Korea or NZ be able to reopen their borders? They will have little to no immunity, so possibly not for a year or more.
Unfortunately, I think it's a bit too late for the USA to do that now.
If we do test/trace/isolate, and start requiring masks in enclosed spaces, we could start opening up in a fairly safe way.
