So what is the economy going to look like when we don't have people traveling, no hotels booked, no cruises, restaurants empty, people working from home, hundreds of thousands dead, no healthcare system, people not able to work either due to being sick, taking care of someone sick or attending funderals. How are we going to do with oil prices at $20? Now, stretch this over a 18 month period.
If we shut it down 2 months ago we could quite literally already be done with it and the only consequence would be no international travel for a year but two months ago that seemed really extreme.
If we prioritized testing early then we could be living with the virus like South Korea.
We chose to go let the virus run wild for 6 weeks, then try to play catch up and then right as we were about to get caught up we quit and let the virus win. I've never been so disappointed. The economic fall out from this decision is simply not imaginable.