I think you have summarized a take on the virus that the President appears to have assumed (and imposed on the country) from the start. Yet, some nations have slowed the spread to zero, or near-zero. So, his assumptions were either simply incorrect, or questionable as a matter of degree to such an extent that it can be said he has already cost dozens of thousands of lives just in the US.

@kmaz Whether some nations have slowed the spread to zero is entirely beside the point. What about in two or three years? There will be fresh fuel in those nations and the wildfire will break out again unless a vaccine is developed.

Meanwhile, places that let nature run its course will have already been burned over. Those left alive will have immunity.

The death toll in the US is currently 39 per 100,000, which is a meager four one hundredths of one percent, and most of those were near the end of their lives anyway. In comparison, in the US 52/100,000 die from unintentional injuries annually. Why aren’t we crying bloody murder over that and playing the blame game?

No. Simply wrong on several counts. There's no guarantee there will ever be a vaccine. The reason to close the economy was to keep health care systems from being overwhelmed and set up robust test, trace and contact systems. As numerous countries did, and now have Covid-19 shut down and under control. The failed states unable to do this (which sadly includes the US) are not going to be welcome members of the international community until they do. It's the fourth worst mass death event in US history, and it's not slowing down. Minimizing it or pretending it will go away is wishful thinking, which sadly is how we got into this mess to begin with.

@Druvius In terms of deaths per million, the US is nowhere near the top. As many as eight European countries have higher rates. All nations are relaxing shutdown measures. It’s not because the virus is under control. The virus can resurge at any time and place where there are people without immunity.

It is simply not feasible to keep the economy shut down for extended periods. Such a step would create more damage than it would prevent.

It seems to be standard practice to exaggerate the effects of the epidemic in order to stir up fear and make political hay.

@Druvius

Thanks for trying to offer some reasonable points. I doubt they will have much impact on WilliamFleming's thinking, but thanks anyway.

A few additional points from me:

It is possible that in the end this disease is simply too communicable and can't be contained, but so far it looks like it can be if extreme measures are taken (i.e.: a fully locked-up country which follows a variety of measures as a team can in theory stop it). I"m not sure we will be so fortunate with all diseases in the future, but this does not mean one gives up on addressing the issue at hand.

It's hard to know, really, what the mortality is from this thing because if more people have been exposed then we realize, then that means it is actually less deadly. Still, if we follow William's advocated global policy to its logical point of view and pencil in a conservative number of one half of one percent of global population dying, (and others being injured) then that would mean 40m people dead. If we postulate something like 3% of global population, then that would mean about 240m people dead.

So, thank goodness the US does not determine virus policy for other countries, and some of them seem to be smart about the thing, (whereas others do not).

President Trump and others seem to spend some time pretending and posturing that they are the ones concerned about the economy, but if they were, they would pay more attention to those countries which have done a much better job on the virus, study what they did, and make some effort to learn from it. It seems possible that those countries are going to emerge with better economic health than the US.