Dealing with a biological danger such as a highly contagious virus is obviously not easy. In hindsight what the totalitarian chinese communists accomplished in Wuhan and Hubei province when they completely shut down the cities by forcing everyone to stay home and stay off the streets for 7 days, and restricting travel for 2 months, could possibly work to drastically slow down the spread of the contagion. However, as with a flu (influenza) virus or common cold virus (common corona virus), you cannot stop the spread considering our dense urban environments, rapid and dense travel lifestyle and conditions, and, outside totalitarian run countries, considering our freedoms and liberties that give us freedom to travel and move about.
Shutting down an economy for 2 weeks is feasible and could even be tolerable. However, months of a complete shutdown would be devastating. Learning to work in an environment with a contagious virus has been the challenge of every state and city in the United States and leaders such as governors and mayors are having to contribute to the difficult decisions that must be made, it is not easy considering most of these decisions are a lose-lose proposition because either way a decision can severely negatively impact the population, whether in terms of deaths due to exposure or deaths and devastation caused by impoverishment from shutting down businesses. As Heather MacDonald so bluntly stated in Hillsdale's Imprimis newsletter:
"The politicians' ignorance about the complexity of economic life was stunning, as was their hypocrisy. To a person, every elected official, every public health expert, and every media pundit who lectured Americans about the need to stay in indefinite lockdown had a secure ("essential") [or taxpayer paid] job. Not one of them feared his employer would go bankrupt."
The US Congress made efforts to prevent economic devastation by providing free money through the PPP program to keep people employed even when not working, states continued to honor unemployment benefit handouts, including additional assistance from the federal government. States and counties also provided free money to support businesses. But this type of assistance could only be temporary and is not sustainable as the taxpayer debt rises, a burden to all of our children, teenagers, and college age students in the decades to come.
In the end, the only way to quell a pandemic is to develop a safe vaccine. The "flu shot" has kept me personally from getting horribly sick due to an influenza virus for over 10 or 11 years. It may now seem like we need a coronavirus vaccine for some years until it disappears from the population (at least temporarily). The mRNA injection compounds and technology appear to be relatively risky and dangerous for many people (correlating with increased incidences of blood clots, heart failure, strokes, tumors, etc). Shutting down city and state economies is not an option, a balance between businesses creating safer environments (requiring masks, separation, and sanitizing) and all of us protecting our senior citizens must be achieved until vaccines are developed and produced.
