[altcognito]

I think there was genuine concern that the quarantine as implemented would not be enough. You can see lots of stories locally wherever you are about how people aren't obeying the order. Italy was still in a lot of trouble despite having had some quarantine measures in place. Hindsight shows the quarantine was effective enough to get numbers down. The US, despite reacting too late, did lockdown fully relatively quickly.

I would agree that modeling after NYC seems like a bad idea given the lack of density and public transportation. On the other hand, Michigan looked pretty exponential, and as the lagging cases came in from other states, they also began to look fairly exponential as well. Despite cases staying elevated for now, the exponential growth has died down.

The US missed the worst of hospitals being overrun and it running away in multiple cities.

[Loughla]

>The US missed the worst of hospitals being overrun and it running away in multiple cities.

I want to add ", so far" to the end of that sentence. I do not hold hope that this will be true as we fight among ourselves to reopen various portions of the country/economy.

[xienze]

> I do not hold hope that this will be true as we fight among ourselves to reopen various portions of the country/economy.

But things won’t be the same after reopening as they were before. People will be wearing masks (I see a lot of that already), keeping distance, etc. Couple that with common sense restrictions like “keep the elderly and sick at home”, “no big public events”, “no sporting events”, and “lots of restaurants have gone out of business”, it’s clear the opportunity for infection spread will be lower.