So I guess I should trust your word on it rather than that of the experts at the CDC, WHO, Johns Hopkins, etc who have basically said just what I said.
S Korea indeed did lockdowns but then moved to a test and isolate regime. And the issue isn't necessarily the number of new cases per day. It's the exponential increase. S Korea is holding fairly steady in case increase, and it's small. US is seeing exponential increases in the number of new cases per day, which makes this somewhat terrifying.
Again, the strategy outlined by many experts is to lockdown until rate of infection is low, then rigourously test and quaranteen (and maybe even lock down isolated areas).
Unless of course, you're more of an expert than any of these people who specialize in the field.
By the time we started testing, it was way too late to contain the outbreak with testing/isolation. The capacity didn't really matter because there was never any desire (anywhere, not just in the US) to try to test the general population to find asymptomatic cases.
As I described earlier in the thread, when "patient zero" in Washington State arrived, he contacted health authorities immediately. They tested him and confirmed he had the "Wuhan coronavirus" as it was known at the time in all media. They isolated him and contact traced. They monitored all the contacts they discovered, none of whom became infected. They missed somebody because somebody else was infected and started the outbreak. All the testing in the world wouldn't have made any difference because the people that needed to be tested for an isolation strategy were.
All it takes to spread this virus is one asymptomatic person picking their nose and touching a railing or elevator button that is then touched by countless other people, some of whom don't wash their hands and subsequently touch their eyes, nose or mouth.
First, your assumption on number of cases is pure speculation, we have no idea what the number of unreported cases are, or if people are ignoring the symptoms - in fact, we have reason to believe that the number of unreported cases, while of course higher, is not as high as you probably think. What we can see is % of people who have the virus vs % of people who were tested, and the rates lead me to believe that the virus isn't hugely widespread yet, thanks to distancing measures.
Second: comparing % of deaths to a population level is not how these things are measured, and drastically minimizes the human tragedy of all this. That many deaths in such a short window of time is nothing to trivialize. And no one in the medical community measures things in that way.
Third: deaths climb exponentially when left unchecked. We've seen that. Italy is slowing now thanks to lockdown. Given the rate at which growth multiplies, it's easy to see a scenario where there are a lot more infections and deaths absent the measures we are taking.
It isn't pure speculation. One study estimated 86% asymptomatic cases and Dr. Birx yesterday threw out the number 600,000 as possibly the real number of cases in Hubei Province vs. the 60,000 confirmed when discussing infection rates and why the worst case scenario of 60% of the population infected was overblown because the projection assumed three unabated outbreak cycles.
While the deaths are tragic, there is also the human tragedy of subjecting the entire population to measures which take away a day of quality life for every day the measures are in place and additional days of quality life for the economic damage done by those measures over the medium term.
My opinion is that the lives saved (in practical terms extended) do not outweigh the quality of life taken from the rest of the population of the planet.
A family may have been planning a once in a lifetime trip to WDW for this week and grandma or grandpa may pass away of unrelated causes before they can reschedule. That moment and experience would be lost forever and also make the future trip filled with thoughts of "I wish grandpa could have been here."
Cancelling March Madness has taken away days of enjoyment from tens of millions of people. On a lesser level, I can't even go out to eat with my parents which is an activity that we enjoyed on a regular basis. Each of those missed dinners is a moment lost that can never be regained.
The point of life for humans is to enjoy living. We don't live just to exist and reproduce like a plant or animal.
