The problem with this is that a 14 day total economic halt will be devastating. Even assuming all office workers work remote basic social structure will be endangered. The hospitals need to stay open, people need to keep operating water and electricity utilities, food distribution needs to continue as many do not have 14 days of stock at home.

It is not about those dams politician that only care about reelection numbers, it also about keeping the wheel of society turning.

To say nothing of how much total hysteria that would cause.

In China we have been on economic halt since late January. The hospitals stay open, utilities are running, food deliveries, all of that is still working. There is no shortage of food or other daily products.

What has changed is that almost everything is being delivered from online store or purchased from supermarket or pharmacy during restricted hours. Anybody who worked a pink collar job before has no job now. Anybody who owned a brick and mortar business before is hoping that the government grants will cover the rent and allow it to reopen if/when things finally go back to normal.

Lockdown like this is no doubt devastating to the economy. I don't think we've seen the worst of it yet. But so far it hasn't affected supply of food, clothing, shelter.

Hospitals in China have been cancelling all elective surgeries and sending the majority of their in-patient home. This was done partly due to the fears of the virus but also because a large part of irregular staff (nurse assistants contractors, medical students and registrars) were away and unable to work. Bear in mind the outbreak happened in late winter when most hospitals would run at near capacity anyway and there is no way to avoid the loss of life.

I agree that we have not fully realised the effect of the lockdown yet, but from what I have gathered things are not very promising. It's unlikely that people will ever go without food or shelter, however the economic progress they worked hard to achieve in the past decade could very easily be undone.

I think how devastating it is depends on whether the government will just step in to make things whole or not. Seriously the government could just tell payroll companies to cut checks as normal and put it on the treasuries dime. They could just declare debt holidays.

Probably means people and businesses in places like China will be mostly 'fine' and people in the US are going to get savaged.

Quarantine for everything but the very bare minimum services (the ones you mention but the food which can be distributed home to home) seems the only logical path to the resolution of the matter. The spread of the virus caused by a relaxed quarantine (as the one enforced now, based on people good will) will certainly cause the collapse of the system you are describing due to the saturation of the hospitals. During tonight's news, journalist Mentana showed graphs describing a significant decrease in contagion in the Lodi and Codogno areas, i.e. in those areas where the most drastic measures have been taken. In order to have a functioning economy, I believe it is necessary to have a population and not just what remains of it.

To my understanding now there is little hope to "stop" the virus in geographical terms; to avoid collapse it would be enough for it to spread slow enough.

The recommended isolation period might not be a mere 14 days for much longer.

"According to the official Weibo news of the "News 1 + 1" column of CCTV, on March 6, Bai Yansong talked with Wu Hao, the head of the community prevention and control expert group of the central steering group.

"Wu Hao said: Patients discharged from Wuhan must have 14 days of centralized isolation observation and 14 days of home medical isolation observation, and they must go through a total of 28 days of isolation observation period. The first 14 days are the observations of centralized medical isolation points, which are usually requisitioned and modified medical isolation points such as hotels or training schools for observation. In principle, each isolation point is matched by a doctor and a nurse for every 50 people, and there are other life support personnel. At the same time, there is a division-level leader cadre at the isolation point."[1][2]

Also, when it comes to trying to squash the epidemic nation-wide, even 28 days might not be enough, as you have to reset the clock with every new infection.

Let me give an example. Let's say everyone in Italy isolates themselves (with their families or whoever they're living with) for 14 days. At day 13, someone of them that's infected could infect someone else they're living with, and if they then go out in to society on day 14 they can start the epidemic all over again.

Of course, if this was perfect isolation, with every single individual keeping completely away from every other individual, then 14 days (or 28 days) might be enough (assuming no atypical cases that take longer to resolve). But that's not going to happen in the real world.

People will need to have some contact for getting food from each other, for example, and for keeping essential utilities like water and electricity running, for keeping hospitals open, etc. That's not to mention group living facilities like nursing homes and prisons. There are just not enough individual living accommodations to make perfect isolation possible.

Worse, even if there was perfect isolation in Italy, when the isolation period ends the epidemic could still start all over again when one single sick person from another country enters.

In order to be really effective, such isolation measures would have to be both perfect and simultaneously held all over the world, or else once a country is clear of the disease it would have to somehow prevent sick people from other countries from entering, which isn't going to happen either.

[1] - http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2020/03/06/700265.html

[2] - https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/feql65/wuhan_i...

You do understand that 99.9% of businesses in Italy are small and medium companies with fewer than 250 employees [1], yes?

[1] http://doitbetter.info/smes-overview/

Yes, and small and medium companies have expenses, yes? And a plurality of those expenses go to billion dollar, multinational companies, yes? If you quarantine an area, people stop purchasing oil, yes?

Or, you know, the supply lines of food, medicine, etc. that make modern life possible.

What's the phrase? Something like a country is never more than a week without food from revolution?

You can maintain all of this in a quarantine situation with proper planning.

People still need to pay rent and bills, even the people flipping burgers.

Truly halting the economy is a catastrophe of it own.

I believe it's largely political posturing at this point in every country.

It's being modelled and shaping policies. It makes no sense to try to stop it, cease all activity. That's too late, difficult and costly. But it makes sense to delay and spread it over time. So measures need to be, imperfect.

I can see the sense in slowing the spread to help the medical system cope.

What does this quarantine mean for you? Are you not leaving the house/flat at all?