And yes, I know the libertarian take here is to just take the government out of it and let people decide what they want to do. But, judging from many recent posts in this thread, there seems to be a realization that this wouldn't really be a solution -- because most people simply aren't ready or willing to go back to business as usual, even if you let them. And an economy with no customers isn't an economy.
So what I wish we'd talk about more in this thread is what realistic alternatives we actually have. What does -- or should -- "re-opening the economy" look like?
Here are some random thoughts and questions I have in this vein. If nothing else, perhaps this will at least convince some people here that not everybody who disagrees with you is a fascist:
- The default at the moment seems to be to assume we'll have sufficient testing and contact tracing in place "soon" to prevent most large scale outbreaks. I can sort of believe the testing side of this -- we're not there right now, but it seems at least plausible that we could get there. But I'm always surprised that there is so little discussion of contact tracing. Traditional shoe-leather contact tracing is *hugely* demanding -- how many tracers do we actually have or can train, and how many cases could we realistically track this way?
- As was briefly discussed earlier in this thread -- if shoe-leather contact tracing is unrealistic, could/should things like phone apps be used? Could the privacy concerns be dealt with somehow, e.g. via strict laws with massive penalties for data breaches/misuses?
- Finally, there *is*, of course, a way to reduce the IFR and still achieve herd immunity. If you could quarantine old people and people with serious co-morbidities, and if you could also make sure that the rest of us mostly get infected, you'd probably get to sth like the 60% infected threshold with an IFR < 0.1%, say. But how could you actually achieve this? This virus is pretty damn infectious, so how do you effectively quarantine old and sick people? And are younger and healthier people really going to be so keen to get infected for the greater good? I mean their odds of not dying are good, but the disease is still pretty nasty, and some *will* die, of course. So, individually, everybody is better off if everybody else got themselves infected. (The pay-off matrix here is that of a Prisoner's Dilemma, actually.)
- Last, but not least -- do we actually know that infection gives long-lasting immunity against COVID-19? If not, that's obviously the nightmare scenario. I suspect it would change the cost-benefit calculus of almost all interventions.