Yeah we can't live in bubbles forever. 40 million people are unemployed in the U.S. now and counting. Millions of livelihoods are being destroyed, suicides are up, deaths for untreated non-Covid diseases are up, and if we want to avoid the complete breakdown of civilization we need to get back to work.

The government orders aren't the only thing impacting the economy.

Figuring out how to mitigate the virus, and thus making people feel more confident about economic activity, is what the economy needs.

Like good luck with it, but if 95% of Americans started wearing masks in the next couple of weeks, it's pretty clear that this would be a big boost to the economy over the next 6 months. But we don't do group oriented statistical mitigations here.

But that's not the choice facing us. An exponential spike in deaths is quite a different thing from a linear one!