Consider two cases:
- On May 15 SF has had no new cases since May 1st. It decides to reopen.
- On May 15 SF has had 150 new cases (ten a day) since May 1st. It decides to reopen.
By June 15th, is the total number of cases any different under these scenarios? In either case, has the city been able to function without having to reclose?
I'm not sure the answer to these - but my instinct is that the situations would be virtually the same.
White collar jobs will keep telecommuting if there’s a risk of community spread. No hr/leg department wants the liability. The secondary effects are decrease in demand on automobile related businesses like gas stations, servicing. Also decrease in car sales. Also the company ban on business travel which hits airlines, hotels, conferences etc.
Do you know what that will cost both in an acute USD fashion as well as the geopolitical and economic chronic fashion? I'm legitimately interested if you've thought through the externalities of this plan.
>Economy will crash even if we open up
This invites us to think of economic crashes as a do-or-don't function. This oversimplifies, and prevents us from thinking through the various degrees of "opening up" we might attempt, and the various kinds of economic harm we will suffer in different scenarios.
>People will continue to voluntarily shelter.
Some people will. Some people already were, for other medical reasons. The question is how many, and how much of an impact this will have (both in terms of controlling the disease spread, and harming people's physical health, emotional health, financial health).
Well, not completely eliminated, but it will be eliminated soon enough based on current trends.
That is no one's goal at this point. To imagine it is would be to completely misunderstand this pandemic and how it is being addressed. The one and only goal is to reduce the rate of the spread, and it has seemingly worked very well.