I am with DREDIOCK on this one.
People have many weaknesses. Like Recency Bias. When the world changes suddenly out from under people, most have a hard time accepting it. That's why the first phase of Loss/Grief Processing is "Denial". People expect the world to roll along pretty much the way it was yesterday, last week, last year. That can't all change over night. Surely not. Sorry, but life as you have know it is about to be put on pause for a while. Maybe 12 months or more. Start dealing with it.
The next phase is Anger. So it's easier for people like Drediock and Shuffler to attack the people bringing them the information they don't want to hear, than it is to just face threat itself. It serves an emotional need. I guess it makes them feel temporarily empowered in a largely powerless situation. So insult the people trying to get through to you this is not just the Flu. Insult the people trying to stock up for long periods of home-bound self-isolation. Call everyone the stupid panicking herd. If it makes you feel better, knock yourself out.
But it's not going to alter the outcome.
The next phase is Bargaining. OK. OK. When you realize you can neither ignore or insult this threat away, it's time to bargain. What if we close the schools? What if we stay home from work? What if we cancel sporting events? What if we promise to wash our hands 4 times a day? All these things are good, but it's not going to make the threat go away. It's not going to avoid the pain that is coming. Through massive effort and sacrifice we might can shift the curve from exponential to geometric. Sorry, it's not going linear. That's not how infectious disease works. But exponential to geometric is not nothing. That would be saving thousands of lives. It's worth the effort. It's the only thing we can do at this point. The only time we could have really changed the outcome was in the early hours/days/weeks. That window has closed. We flubbed it.
The next phase is Depression. It's going to get ugly over the next 12 months. There is no painless way out of this. There will be pain from the loss of life of friends, and family. There will be pain from the economic disruption. There will be pain from the sense of powerlessness. There will be pain from regret of not having taken this more serious and not done the things that could have really helped in the window when it was still possible. There is going to be pain. Sorry. I wish I could wave a magic wand and we all avoid that.
Finally there will be Acceptance. It is what it is. It is not going to be an Extinction Level Event, but it's not going to be the seasonal Flu. It only ends two ways:
1. The infections progress until "herd immunity" level is achieved. Given the currently measured R0, that would require the infection of about 80% of the population. Given the CFR, that path would create a lot of mass hospitalizations and fatalities.
2. Mitigation strategies, and draconian quarantines, maybe if we are lucky, pharma that can weaken the virus might help us hold the worst of the illness at bay long enough to get an induced immunity from a vaccine. But realistically, that will still be 12 to 24 months away. I think it is irresponsible to lead people to think we could realistically get a vaccine sooner, but please, prove me wrong. I think an effective vaccine is the only way we get out of this.
Either way, the social and financial and economic repercussions of this infection are going to be significant. Like generationally significant.
P.S. I hope in 12 months I can come back to this thread and you can all laugh at me for having been completely wrong.
"When a danger is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t."
