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Originally Posted by Titty Meat
Interesting. I'll have to give it a look.
I'll throw this out there and i'm interested in your take: There seems to be a line of thinking that at some point the economy collapsing which I suppose could be more of a disaster than the virus itself. I agree with measures taken to combat the virus at this moment but what do you think we should do if in a few months we continue this economic downfall and there's little to suggest we've minimized the virus? It seems to be there will be a vaccine possibly by that point but I just don't see how we can go into the fall and do the samething thing we're doing for the 2nd wave. I'm also skeptical we will have a very effective treatment until this time next year. At that point won't the open everything up crowd have some credibility?
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I think that faster and more robust economic stimuli are still needed. That will help. I think that what we need to be doing during this period of lockdown is protecting health care workers and limiting the spread as much as possible while ramping up production of PPE and ventilators as though we were in a wartime situation, because we are. We need enough PPE to not only protect the healthcare workers, but to protect each other when we are out in public and ensuring absolute adherence to wearing PPE. That means masks and hand sanitizer for everyone.
We need to be producing billions of masks, millions of gallons of hand sanitizer, and millions of containers of disinfecting wipes.
If we can do that, then you can ease restrictions substantially. I still don't think you could have restaurants and bars open (because people would have their masks off to eat), but you could open most businesses as long as people were wearing masks while working and adhering to some level of distancing.
Schools could be re-opened with temp scans at the entrance, and lunch could be served in classrooms to mitigate exposure.
Travelers in airports should be required to wear N95 masks before they set foot in the airport. No one in the door or on a shuttle unless they're wearing one.
If hotspots re-emerged, then you could have rolling quarantines of those areas with travel restrictions.
It is a drastic step, but I think you could regain a substantial portion of economic activity while also limiting the spread of the virus and ensuring that hospitals are not overwhelmed.