The US will hit 40,000 deaths today.
There will be second-order effects that people aren't considering. In Seattle, for example, all of the builders I know are saying multi-family residential construction projects have become indefinitely non-viable due to the systemic collapse of the business ecosystem they rely on. Even if things opened up tomorrow, most of their projects will stay dead for the foreseeable future. This will have a large impact for housing costs, construction worker employment, etc many years beyond the term of the lockdown.
I think many people are oblivious to the long-term second-order damage that is being inflicted in some industries that cannot be fixed on any kind of timeframe that matters to ordinary people.
Unfortunately, in the US, the federal government has presented the false choice of safety vs economy. Yes there are trade-offs in tactics, but it's not one or the other. Stop playing politics, unify messaging, and increase spending money on both. I'm helping organize projectdomino.org as part of staving off the currently-likely upcoming shitstorm of reopening without public health funding, coordination, infrastructure, and compliance. I encourage aiding local causes and telling your local Republican leaders that you're tired of their shit that has now stepped up to pathogens literally attacking us at home.
> “With the global recession gathering pace, there could be hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths in 2020”, the Secretary-General warned.
> This scenario would effectively reverse progress made in reducing infant mortality over the past two to three years.
Ideally we want to save lives but there will be a line drawn somewhere where we must open up businesses again.