On one hand, it's tempting to think if we let it sweep through the population and kill everyone it's going to kill, then our economic hit will be minimized and we can move on. The problem with that is if it spreads that widely it becomes endemic and could cause recurring spikes in illness every so often, frequency I couldn't truly say, but it can recur as there have been some reports from Hong Kong discussing this. Hopefully we would have increased our mask/glove and ventilator production so that our surge capacity could handle these patients because right now we're not prepared for that. And that means a lot of people also dying NOT from coronavirus if the hospitals get clogged. Plus, there's an economic price to pay if the virus isn't adequately slowed as well - even if it were only old people dying, those people purchase a lot of goods and contribute economically. Then there are the people with underlying conditions - we think of these as people with diabetes, high BP, missing one foot, sitting at home and getting disability. Those people exist but there are bigger portions with with just one or two out of: asthma, high BP, diabetes (both types), atherosclerosis, obesity, chronic infections - people who otherwise work and generally live normal lives and contribute to the economy, who also happen to be at higher risk of dying. Still others - healthy cancer survivors or people with cancer that has a good prognosis once they get through treatment, transplant recipients - also people who may otherwise be working age adults and they're not a tiny segment of the population.

On the other hand, some people want extremely strict measures. Everything close, everyone stay at home for varying lengths of time and shut the country down, the economy will just start back up once we all come back right? That's problematic for a couple reasons. The most obvious one is destroying people's jobs and small businesses, those organizations have property and workers that, if lost, can't just be reacquired once things calm done. Like others have mentioned too, that trickles down the line chronologically if you shut things down for long enough. That leads to a lot of poverty and worse health outcomes in the future. And with the aforementioned Hong Kong example of recurrence, that strategy is not tenable for long enough to really suppress the virus. Others have brought up more people being forced into their broken homes, leading to more assault and child abuse. So we obviously want to avoid a second great depression, people starving in the streets and losing their shelter because they don't have a job and have no options to get one to pay the landlord who still is demanding money.

The harsh reality of this virus is that there likely isn't any way that everyone gets out entirely safe. All of humanity will hurt, both financially and physically, some more in one direction and some more in others.. and I don't know what the exact best way forward is, but I'm pretty certain that both extremes (let the virus just do its thing, or quarantine everyone for months) would have much worse outcomes than somewhere in the middle, which is what I think the various leaders are trying to go for. Middle ground options unfortunately have non-zero costs both with economics and health, but the hope is that the cumulative of those would be less than the total devastation by taking either extreme. Looking at things this way, I know I could treat people better, be less angry about parents congregating at the airport, or less angry about people being angry about people congregating.. many of us could. I think we need to get past the bickering phase and try to help each other if at all possible.