Fair enough, thank you. I like to keep things grounded in reality, theoretical considerations are fine for after the fact analysis but in a fluid situation decisions need to be made. They'll never be perfect but not deciding is abdication and that isn't really an option.

Where I live the health care system has been weakened to the point that we can't really deal with such levels of calamity in a responsible manner any more, the result of years of neo-liberal cost cutting and attempts to create a market situation around health care. The end result is a terribly fragile mix of high density populations, extreme mobility and very little cushion to absorb mistakes. It remains to be seen if either one of the three scenarios you sketched will work for us in the longer term, so far it's not looking all that good but it also could have been far worse.