@OskiSD posted:We've done a lot but accomplished very little. Americans were told they needed to flatten the curve, and so we shutdown like other countries. Problem is this - shutdowns are designed to do two things: 1) slow the spread and 2) give society time to organize widespread testing AND a robust contact tracing program that determines the contacts of an infected person. After shutdown lifts, the state can quarantine folks who have tested positive and the rest of us can get back to it.
If you don't do the second bit, all you've done is slow the curve and delay the next spike in numbers.
Dozens of countries managed to do this in a reasonable way. We didn't.
They put a ton of effort into item 2 in Louisiana and it didn't do anything except increase the number of cases with respect to other states. Notice we have the highest per capita number of tests AND active cases in the US (or at least we did a couple of weeks ago). Contact tracing didn't work because a majority of people didn't answer the phone. Also, 70% of people refused to give out the phone numbers of people they were in contact with. I guess, they could have compelled them to do so, but I don't think that would work so well in the US.