Look at the hapless response to Hurricane Maria. You see any difference between that and the hapless response to Covid19? I don't. Hurricane Katrina? Ditto.
Consider the need to replace the year old train tunnels that service New York. Nope can't do it.
California needs to build a high speed rail system to deal with increased commuter and air traffic? Watch people get into a rage at the idea.
The US healthcare system is completely out of control. Costs twice what other countries systems cost, with worse outcomes and large numbers of unserved people. Lots of countries have systems that work. But reform is impossible.
The underlying cause here isn't technical. It's nihilist ideology.
No I'm convinced it's pointless because herd immunity is inevitable and essentially free.
Testing somebody in the morning, then them going to the grocery store in the afternoon, is pointless.
Testing takes a significant amount of resources per test, which we don't have to do 300 million tests per week.
If you walk through the problem at this point, there is no solution for the US. Mother Nature won this time, and people like you are shouting into the wind.
Even if there was a vaccine tomorrow, there's enough anti-vaxxers that it won't be 100% applied. And it better be a free vaccine, because half the population is unemployed at this point and they're not paying $100 for non-essentials.
We don't know if herd immunity is even a thing.
I understand (and support) opposition to contact tracing by badly designed technological solutions, but what is your argument against manual contact tracing? (actually asking people one-on-one who they've been in contact with if they test positive to Covid-19)
I'm just after your reasoning. I promise I won't deride your decision in any way (and I hope others refrain from doing so as well). People react differently in extreme situations, and I try to be aware of as many different reactions as possible, and possibly try to understand the reasons for those reactions.
Are they there for contact tracing, to serve a warrant, to tip off ICE, or to plant something?
After all, the CIA used vaccines as a ruse to hunt Bin Laden.
I think South Korea, Hong king and Singapore already had second wave.
The US, by contrast, has rapidly increasing herd immunity. That's why the trend is going down despite less social distancing. And there has never been a working coronavirus vaccin, so the assumption there will be one for covid19 soon is unfounded optimism.
The rise differential now is the first good example of measurement of policy effects.
These are not political points, just data points.
You're convinced hard equals impossible. Which is definitely part of why the US is so incompetent when it comes to this (or healthcare in general). People don't care that we suck.
I just find that sad and horrifying.
Let's say you take NYC, where the cases have been tailing off, and you implement a massive contract tracing effort there. MASSIVE. Maybe it doesn't save the whole country. Maybe it doesn't even prevent inbound infections from spreading very well.
But it's also a hell of a lot of practice for the next time we need to accomplish something big.