[irq11]

First, the kids are fine. This virus doesn’t really seem to affect children.

Second, “worrying” accomplishes nothing. Wash your hands; avoid people when you’re sick. Avoid sick people. Have a couple weeks of groceries on hand if you think quarantine is likely. These are things you should be doing every year during flu season.

But I can’t stress this enough: there’s nothing we can be doing, rationally, where we can shave off a bit of economic growth in exchange for less virus. At this point, the virus is endemic. Quarantines make panicky people feel good, but don’t actually help. Isolation of Wuhan was a good thing to try, but it failed.

It’s time for the next step: acknowledgement that the virus is everywhere, and directly protecting vulnerable populations. This is going to happen sooner or later.

[Der_Einzige]

You could immediately fund the CDC to "absurd" levels, such as by giving them say, 100 billion dollars. I think that would be far more effective than rate cuts which are likely far more "expensive" but won't actually help.

Though, I want to see the current CDC leadership out. They should not have silently removed their total tests done. The world needs to see their current incompetence as a lesson.

[taylodl]

Honest question - did that come from CDC leadership or from within the White House?

[scarmig]

There are obvious ways you can exchange economic growth for lower mortality. See: China. Within a month, it will have fewer active cases and daily new cases than the United States.

I suspect it will end up endemic, but the rate at which it infects everybody matters, a lot. That rate of new infection changes the load profile for the medical system, and it's when the system is overloaded that mortality skyrockets. Halving the infection rate could cut mortality by 90%.

And that's to say nothing of other advantages of kicking the can down the road, like higher temperatures decreasing transmission, doctors developing improved treatment protocols, and even a vaccine.

[irq11]

Slowing down the virus is fine. There is no effective way to do that by hobbling economic growth.

We don’t need quarantines and travel bans and trip cancellations and business shutdowns to slow the virus. These have always been scientifically dubious overreactions. Investing in hospital capacity and contact tracing, on the other hand, makes a lot of sense.

The drastic, economically expensive steps China took didn’t stop the virus from spreading out of (or within) China. Quarantines haven’t been effective anywhere else. There are things we can do to slow the virus, but few of them require massive economic impact.

[scarmig]

It's categorically false that it didn't stop the virus from spreading within China. Those measures shifted an exponential growth curve to a sublinear one.