Who knows. I just view it with the attitude that it is mostly futile, those of us who can work from home should, those who can't should take extra precautions not to spread germs, those who are at greater risk should be able to take temporary leave while collecting unemployment. It is pointless and counterproductive to try to shut everything down though, viruses are microscopic, they reproduce in huge numbers, they are easily spread and it is impossible to completely isolate everyone from everyone else, it takes *one* slip up somewhere to bypass all of the draconian containment efforts. The vast majority of us are going to catch this bug sooner or later no matter what. The best we can hope to do is slow down the spread enough that hopefully the medical system doesn't get overwhelmed but loads of people have lost their jobs already which in most cases (in the US) means they have lost their medical coverage and the ability to pay doctor bills, we are going to see a lot of people die of all sorts of different things because they chose to chance staying home vs ending up with a huge hospital bill. Much of these will be difficult to link directly to Covid because they'll be caused by unrelated conditions that could have been caught by preventative care or non-emergency doctor visits. Then when you have people panicking and doing things like hoarding supplies and even stealing masks and stuff from hospitals that all just makes a bad problem so much worse.
One thing it does highlight is the utter lack of preparedness, even having some sort of plan in place to mitigate the damage would have gone a long way. We should have at least a few domestic factories that can manufacture medical supplies and equipment, even if they have to be government subsidized to compete with imported products during normal times, they can be idled when not needed but we NEED the ability to ramp up capacity quickly. I'm skeptical of the usefulness of surgical masks in these cases but none the less there is no good reason we shouldn't be able to produce billions of them, a modern automated production line could pump out hundreds of thousands or millions a day. We need to have the ability to quickly set up temporary hospitals like they do in warzones, we need to have a large pool of people who have had some sort of medical training so they can volunteer at these facilities in emergencies doing tasks that don't really need a fully trained and licensed doctor or nurse. This is all stuff we need to do 10 years ago, not today. I shudder to think what we will do if there is ever another world war, in WWII our factories quickly shifted over to produce vast amounts of equipment for the war effort but today we have virtually no factories to shift over.
In the nearer term, stores should have immediately implemented progressive pricing policies at the first signs of hoarding, buy one at the regular price, pay progressively more for each additional of the same item, that would go a long way toward stemming the hoarding. Then if only our media and politicians would focus on distributing the information without the sensationalism and hype, keeping people calm, reminding them not to panic, how to prepare, not to hoard, etc along with efforts to control the spread rumors and false information on social media. Instead it has been a complete shitshow with the media stirring panic and hype, creating a polarization of people in a panicked frenzy who think the world is coming to and end on one side and people who think the whole thing is a bunch of BS and refusing to take any action on the other. I think we'd be far better off if most people were sensible and composed and just stayed calm and took a few sensible precautions. Panicked and complacent people are both part of the problem and get in the way of those working on solutions.
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