The only way to guard against this is to shut the country down for 2 - 3 weeks. Close schools, businesses, cancel travel, cancel events. Reduce public transportation to a minimum for emergencies. Call it a national holiday.
The problem continues to be that people are asymptomatic and are spreading the virus for 1 - 3 weeks before they know they have it. Tests are only being given to people with clear symptoms and other "risk factors" such as travel to infected areas or contact with another known case, but that won't work. So you either shut the country down like it's Christmas or you let it go and take it in the shorts.
Under these conditions, everything from going to the grocery store, to buying coffee at Starbucks, to going to work, or riding in an elevator, etc. puts a person at risk of exposure.
What's taking place now isn't solving anything, it's just documenting a small part of the problem reactively.
The plus side here is that it will run it's course in a shorter time frame, and the remaining population will be effectively strengthened against it with some level of immunity, even old folks and diabetics. The down side is how hard it is on some, the death of some. In the US I don't think it will be 1% (3.8 Million dead) like early stats are showing because there will be better care for the affected. I don't think it will get to 100,000 either. 10,000. Mostly people already on death's doorstep, within a year or two of going anyway, I mean seriously ailing people already.
It can be stopped by practical measures on the buses, planes, ships, stores, jobs, hotels/casinos/movie theatres/churches. Even asymptomatic folks can hang back a few feet doing business, wear masks, and use some airborne disinfectant aerosol in crowded places. I don't think our crisis management team is understanding all that very well. Every administrator of every public venue should be looking for ways to kill the virus airborn and on surfaces with aerosol disinfectant vapors like chlorine and ozone, and installing uv lights over chechout counters in stores and other strategic spots.
But overall, the "managed response" under Trump is exactly the same as the bureaucrats would be doing under Obama or Biden. Trump is actually irrelevant. Sure he tweets his passing thoughts a lot, but decision is already set to go with the professionals. People picking over Trumps twets or whatever, looking for some way to make it seem irresponsible will have a lot of ammo, but they will be indulging in a senseless, stupid, ignorant, unproductive campaign in doing so.
Thriller disputes the "well-managed" term I deployed. Wants to make this a DumpTrump fearmonger thread. Trump wants positive action, and he might push for stuff more than an Obama or Biden, might try to do more..... but all that stuff will be inconsequential.
The one thing that will really make a difference is the public awareness. Panic and Fear are not really appropriate, though..... just informed actions/measures/ precautions everyone can take for themselves. What people will do for themselves is 10X the effect anything the gov can do.
