Just wait until the first few celebrities die. That'll change everyone's mind very, very quickly.

We'll probably lose many members of Congress. They're the worst case - old, meet with many people, not social distancing.

They have access to better healthcare than you or I, though.

Congresspeople on ventilators still sends a pretty strong message

Getting a ventilator if you need it is good, but even better not to need it.

Wait until 100,000 people die, which would only be 0.2% of the population.

The truth is most deaths are going to be people near or beyond average life expectancy. I don't want to minimize the impact of any person's death, but I think people in general are willing to accept a fairly high death rate among the elderly, especially considering the most likely to perish are those who were already the most likely to perish.

The death rate among the under-70 population is a different matter. If the medical system is overloaded and working-age people start dying en masse, I imagine that would change public consciousness quickly.

Young people don't necessarily die but they may very well end up in reanimation. The prognosis is hopeful if you're young and in reanimation, except if there aren't enough beds to host a sudden afflux of newly sick people in need of reanimation. Should I continue?

Do you mean resuscitation?

Probably. Sorry, my English is failing me when it comes to more technical words

That's about 14 days of people dying at normal USA death rate. Do you think people notice that happening and adjust for it?

hospitals will be overcrowded so your "normal" USA death rate will actually increase because the people who would normally receive medical attention will no longer receive it.

"my" death rate? My "normal" death rate? What are you saying?

There will be overlap between people who die of diseases routinely (the elderly, the immuno-compromised, and those with underlying conditions, and the unlucky) and those who die of this disease. No matter, the point still stands - if 100,000 people dying is what it takes to change people's behaviour significantly, that ought to happen every month, and it doesn't.

I'm more concerned about whether or not we can keep food, utilities, and housing running that long. If the front-line workers in the essential jobs are the most vulnerable to exposure, and the economy has screeched to a hault, can we keep everyone fed that long, keep the lights and sanitation going, while also not infecting everyone?

If you look at the fear --in the supermarkets, in general lack of presence in public-- there are more people taking this seriously than not, with or without an official order.

People are in shock. Shock doesn't last two months. And don't forget all the people you don't see at the supermarkets.

As long as shelves remain empty, people will panic. You can not be panicked, see other people panicking, and then become panicked yourself. So it's going to be difficult for supermarkets to reverse what's happened unless they implement quantity limits.

The shelves are only empty because everyone is stockpiling at the same time. There are no food or toiler paper shortages. But the toilet paper truck doesn't come every 2 hours, so if people buy up all the stock they need to wait until the next regularly scheduled shipment arrives.

It's really not much of a problem, beyond the problem people have created by stockpiling too aggressively.

Similar to the airlines?

And international hotel chains, and... the list grows so quickly, who can possibly keep up?

If we all just stay in our houses forever, we all die anyway.

Might as well risk living before we die.