There’s absolutely no guarantee that the economy will make a quick recovery if the lockdowns are lifted.

If the death toll starts to spike, people are going to stay home anyway, and businesses will be bleeding cash hoping for a recovery that isn’t coming quickly enough.

If people will stay home anyway if need be, then there really is no reason for the authoritarian lockdowns, is there.

At this moment, full recovery is expected to happen no sooner than December 2022. Small business already bled out. If governors extend the lockout for another month, it will make it pointless to go back to work, as there will be no work to go back to. People will stay home until something else happens.

"Something else" being not necessarily external, much less staying passive. Example: post-WWII Germany. People rebuild everything from scratch by goverment just not being an obstacle to them.

I wouldn't say the government being much of an obstacle here, but the union as a whole. It represents ~60% of the Brazilian GDP. So even before rebuilding the country, people we'll need to keep collecting taxes to keep this huge public engine running. It won't be easy.

And some billions from the Marshall Program

What's your scenario for people starving? Congress refuses to give out more money? Workers in "essential" businesses (which includes everything food related) stop working?

I would be more worried about rent and mortgages.

Rent in some Brazilian cities has been massively lifted, specially for the elderly.

Regarding starvation, I don’t see it happening because people is starting to steal, shoplift, local stores. I saw it in front of me last weekend. And they use minors to steal, so nobody goes to jail. I live in São Paulo.

Keep in mind the lockdown is meant to slow spread so the healthcare system doesn't get overloaded, not to stop it.

It is successful in this respect, and IMO a healthy balance of economic slowdown and death toll. We'll probably start reopening (hopefully in stages, so we can monitor impact) in the next ~3 weeks.

I love this kind of thinking.

Earlier in the year it was this was a bad flu, no cause for alarm, no lockdown necessary.

This has switched to the virus being too contagious to contain so you might as well do nothing major to address it and let it run its course.

Truth is countries that took this seriously and acted swiftly controlled it. They’ll be reopening soon (Singapore already has, right?). I’m guessing the US will probably start lifting in May. Trump can huff and puff all he wants but so much of the US economy is tied up in about 10 states so they ultimately call the shots... and they’re keeping the quarantine through the month.

> Singapore already has, right?

Nope. Singapore “locked down” 10 days ago shutting down all schools and non-essential services in what the government has been calling a “circuit breaker”, and the locals have been playfully shortening to “CB”, the short-form of the local Hokkien colloquialism referring to a woman’s genitals. Despite this the number of daily new cases keeps rising and today’s numbers are a new high (again).

Singapore had to tighten up again already. I think perhaps the only country with credible control and an open economy is South Korea.

Taiwan.

Singapore got a 20% increase in cases today, they have not controlled it and they have not reopened.

The only thing that stops this biological contamination is developing community immunity. Treatments help a bit. Almost all else makes it worst.

The actual public health authorities agree that the coronavirus will spread no matter what we do, and that lockdowns will end in the near future.

You’ve managed to completely ignore why we had a lock down; it’s not about preventing total infections, although that would be nice, it’s about preventing a spike of infections that overwhelms the medical system.

I don't follow. I'm not ignoring that. We locked down to prevent a spike, and in many places the spike has been successfully prevented, so those places are now figuring out how to open up. Some people say that this is irresponsible - that nobody should open up until the coronavirus can be eradicated - but this isn't realistic and isn't what public health officials think should happen.