This comes from an anonymous contributor. I have referred to John Ioannidis here before several times. He's what I would call a science critic. A movie critic is 100% in favor of movies, but wants them to be good. John is the same when it comes to science.
Here, he points to the catastrophic consequences of the global containment measures, and goes further, noting that all of the dire predictions of what this particular virus might do are based on flimsy evidence. We really don't know. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to scientific evidence and he makes an extremely persuasive case. The human psychological bias to do something in the face of uncertain risk is surely at play here. My feeling about it is that strong measures are called for to buy us time to figure out what's really going on, but I don't think they can be sustained for very long. We're going to need to figure out a middle way, and accept some deaths from this disease, as we do from other infectious diseases. We are all mortal.
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Just common sense ... it is clear that our current cessation of work, education, and leisure protocols can't stay in place for more than a month or two without leading to recession or depression, and it is clear that we need some sort of cross-section coronavirus infection model of one population in order to know mortality rate, infection rate, modes of transmission and more. And when one country finds this information out, it can reasonably be applied in every other country. I suppose this information will come from whatever country is being run rationally, with belief in scientific research and principles, with priority placed on human life ... if that country exists.
We are steadily learning more, but we still don't have a good understanding of what's going on in the U.S. specifically because of lack of test kits. As far as recession, it's already here, too late to avoid that. Will it turn into a second Great Depression? That's a real risk and as far as I'm concerned, that would be a far greater catastrophe than anything this virus can do. So you're right, they can't keep this up much longer. The costs are just too high, as far as I'm concerned.
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