My general take on it is you have to take the better safe than sorry approach when dealing with a novel virus pandemic. Money can be printed, economies can be rebuilt, you can't bring preventable deaths back to life.
That said, of course things can't stay shut down for ever--or even that much longer. There has to be some balancing of preventable lives lost vs. lasting economic harm for sure. And honestly, the re-opening plan outlined by the White House is pretty ok by me. Require 14 days of decline before starting phase 1, meet other guidelines before phase 2 and so on.
What's stupid is things like what we're seeing in GA that even Trump has lashed out against where close contact businesses like salons, barber shops, massage places, tattoo places are reopened today and dine-in restaurants on Monday. From what I read, GA is like 45/50 states in tests per capita, is likely not at their peak yet (difficult to tell with limited testing and the daily numbers jumping around a lot from what I saw) and they jumped to opening things that are in phase 2 of the federal reopening plan.
That's going to put a lot of less fortunate people (especially those with risk factors, or living with family in high risk groups) in a tough position of having to return to work if ordered it get fired and be ineligible for unemployment benefits. At least those that work for crappy businesses that don't care about their employees. At the least we need some provisions for high risk people (and those living with/caring for high risk people) to stay on unemployment or disability or something until it's safe to return to working in close contact with customers in those type of jobs.
The other thing that is going to be tough is having sporting events with fans or live concerts. Especially in fall/winter when a rebound is likely per epidemiologists. It's scary to think what an outbreak could look like if there are contagious people at events with 20-100k+ people packed into cramped stand in stadiums, arenas and concert venues given what we saw from some super spreader events like those funerals wherever in south Georgia or that small conference (in Boston I think?). Probably going to be looking at either delayed seasons, games with no fans, or games with limited fans and enforced social distancing.
We have tickets to several games, concerts, plays etc. that have been postponed, already rescheduled, or still set to happen thus far on their original date. I really don't think we'll feel comfortable going until there's a vaccine--or we've gotten it and recovered AND it's been confirmed that it builds lasting immunity. Sucks as if the events happen it will probably be impossible to sell the tickets for what we paid as I imagine as lot of folks will be in the same boat of deciding to stay home and trying to ditch tickets.
But it just is what it is. My wife is full time work from home, and I have the ability/option to work from home through at least January. So I don't have much personal anxiety or stress over it as we're fine financially (even my retirement account is starting to bounce back after dropping 50k) and can just keep self isolating and limiting exposure as we have. Just feel bad for at risk people who won't be able to as things reopen and they have to go back to work and wish we had a deeper and stronger social safety net here for those people.
