[panarky]

It's a real dilemma, and it's forcing uncomfortable questions about how many dollars a person-year of life is worth.

We can avoid this terrible trade-off by realizing it's a false choice. We don't have to trade lives for GDP. There is a third option.

We could take a lesson from Singapore, Taiwan and Korea.

We could test millions of people, even those with no symptoms. We could aggressively isolate the positives, and allow the negatives to get on with life, with common sense disinfecting, physical distancing and universal mask wearing.

There is a path out of this dilemma, but in the US it's pretty difficult to execute in the absence of national leadership, with every neighborhood, town, city, county and state left on their own to figure this out.

[Apes]

It's too late for extensive testing. The US is analogous to someone who was just exposed to a massively lethal dose of radiation, but still mostly feels fine for now. The damage is already done, and it's going to start showing up regardless of what is done to prevent it.

Covid-19 has already massively spread in the US, and it's just a matter of days before large amounts of the population become symptomatic. It's too late to do anything about what's coming, and what's coming is going to be really bad.

[owenmarshall]

> It's too late to do anything about what's coming

On one side we have health officials saying "for the love of god, keep the barriers up".

On the other, we have politicians saying "we waited as long as we can, send in as many people as we need to sweep up the supercritical plutonium, it 'won\'t make a difference now' if the PPE isn't there".

Who is to say who is right?