And pointless
They say it lasts for 9 days on surfaces. I don't care how much you wash your hands or isolate if a virus is out there its on Stuff it isn't going to die off. What the real motivation of locking down populations for "their {supposed} safety" is I don't know.
The government is probably doing the right thing, in order to avoid, or prolong the mess as much as possible. What motives do they have to keep us locked-up in doors for months?
Most people, myself included, think the death rate is less than 3%, so we will be just fine. Probably true! However, there are many more things to factor in besides most of us will survive. If everyone is running around contaminating every soul they come in contact with, then we will be in a situation like Italy, where there are too many cases to treat. Hospitals would much rather have a lot less cases, spread out over several months, opposed to thousands of cases concentrated within a few weeks.
So what happens in the everyone runs around town scenario, is that hospitals get too many people, and they do not have the resources to treat them. Dr's have to make decisions like "which patient gets this last ventilator, and who is going to have to tough it out?"
I don't know where you all live, but here in Ohio there's only about 5 hospitals worth a damn. In my hospital, which has a 100 bed ER, and right around 1000 admission beds, we have people sent to us every single day, from every podunk hospital in Ohio, and even Kentucky, and West Virginia. These hospitals are incapable of treating people that are actually sick, because they suck. This is pretty much every hospital not in a major city. They will kill you. I've seen all kinds of people come in all fucked up because some other shitty hospital killed/nearly killed them. One that comes to mind is when a guy came to us that had steak stuck in his throat, and some other hospital perforated his esophagus and lodged the steak in his chest. Creating open air. So handling coronavirus, and preventing the spread of diseases, is not their thing. They can only hope to stabilize a patient and not kill them before shipping them somewhere good. Occasionally, in the small farming communities, there may be a some hospital that has a really kick ass trauma room, because they have so many farming accidents, but in most situations, the only hospitals that are equip to treat critically ill people, are the big ones.
Also, at least in Ohio, every critically ill patient is a 1v1 patient to nurse. There is just not enough staff to take care of this many people. I'm sure these rules would be bent if a pandemic really hit hard, but even then, you need to factor in the medical staff that become patients.
Another thing worth noting, is that almost all medications are manufactured overseas. For example End Stage Renal Disease medication is made in one single plant overseas, as are IV bags. If you remember hurricane Katrina, it was a huge deal for hospitals, because all the IV bags are made in one factory in that area, and the plant couldn't meet demand. It was somewhat of a medical crisis, most people are unaware of.
So there are a lot of reasons that are factored into a decision like this. Yeah, there is a lot of media hype, and misinformation, in order to keep ratings up. However, there is also a lot of solid information that needs to be taken seriously. You probably won't get Coronavirus, and if you do you probably won't die. But take into consideration the elderly, and terminally ill people that needs meds, and take into consideration that maybe someone in your family might not be as lucky, and might be the one that doesn't get a ventilator to help them breathe if they need it.
