The lockdown is literally the opposite. Show me the numbers that prove that COVID-19 is going away. Seems much more likely we'll see another spike soon due to opening early _against all evidence_.
How many people at the lowest of the lowest rung on the ladder being pushed to famine and death because of disrupted supply chains does it take for you to start caring?
The global perspective of this disease is horrifying any way you turn it, and economy has a central part in managing it successfully.
Waiting until we execute a successful testing and tracing program. Even the federal government guidelines for reopening are clear on what the alternate suggestion is, despite what the figurehead of that government seems to want his followers to think.
If 5-10% has it you can essentially just assume everyone has been in contact within 1 or 2 steps with someone who has it, no need for fancy privacy invading tracing.
Testing is good to catch people early, but if the capacity isn't here 2 months after the Italian outbreak, when will it be?
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't push back on the claim that the only two options are uncontrolled spread and never ending lockdown. There is another way, it isn't hypothetical, it is being executed elsewhere. We just aren't taking that path.
Its likely there wont ever be an effective vaccine and folks seem to want to quarantine us until that happens.
At some point people are going to have to be exposed
The "they want to keep us locked down forever" talking point is a manufactured distraction.
A vaccine isnt likely
But your certainty of the unlikelihood of a vaccine is far too strong far too early. There are on the order of ten to a hundred promising efforts toward developing a vaccine well under way. It may very well be that a year or two from now, each of those will have failed. If that is the case I will be open to hearing about how best to manage this indefinitely, and you may be right that testing and tracing won't help that much (but it still seems like we may want to control the order and rate at which people are exposed).
But we're really far from having the evidence to support your claim with any certainty. We haven't run out of ideas for how to make a vaccine yet, we're just getting started.
Both are really new medical technologies in the scope of life.
1. https://twitter.com/COVID19Tracking/status/12599631214325555...
Test capability is not being ramped up as quickly as possible. Other countries with less wealth than we have are still able to test more people per capita. The federal government has been hesitant to use powers and financial capabilities that it uniquely has in order to ramp up testing more quickly. A lot is being left on the table here. But it's not what we're talking about because the distraction campaign is working. It's really a bummer.
We don't need to test everyone, just the subset of people who may have been exposed. And we need a lot more tracing to find those likely exposures from known positive cases.
I don't understand why people act like there is some law of nature that is forcing this to be so much worse here than in some other places. There are countries who are not struggling as much as us, we could be more like them, we just aren't doing the work to get there.
Provide masks and hand sanitizer to every citizen and at a minimum recommend usage at all times outside of the home.
Establish working contract tracing programs, so that spread can be limited.
Once those things have happened (they haven't), re-opening could start to be done safely. Until then, the government's role should be to provide financial, medical and food assistance to the fullest extent possible so that the people and companies who are twiddling their thumbs don't die or go bankrupt while they wait.
The government can literally print money. They could begin distribution tomorrow. They cannot print masks, tests, hand sanitizer, vaccines, gloves, food, etc.