there is a difference between how long this is and how long "this" is. The quarantine will be over by May at the absolute latest just because the current administration can't handle the economic destruction. Rightly or wrongly the US has no social safety net for an extended shut down, so they aren't going to be shut down all summer and thinking so is setting yourself up for disappointment.
You'll see rolling quarantines and hot spots but this country will turn on again before they "should".
you kill people from the virus or from starvation and mental issues. 100% UI is great for 3 months but businesses won't exist to just "turn back on" in a few months because we have a government that can't and won't actually take care of the problem correctly by ensuring they can.
People aren't going to start running out to restaurants if things reopen. And if they do, deaths will spike again and everyone will panic.
There is no path that avoids significant harm to the economy. Countless people will get sick stomping down the number of workers. On top of that, consumer spending isn't going to recover. The pain isn't going away.
I'm sure that's what Fauci is yelling at Trump every time they're away from cameras. Thing is, Governors aren't going to just reopen or lift states of emergency cause Trump said so.
What I'm hearing is this is looking like a two peak scenario, at least. It should slow way down in the summer. Things should be able to reopen when it gets hot and humid, and hopefully we can get testing where it needs to be and greatly scale up our available respirators etc, so that when the virus becomes more and more of a problem as things get colder and drier again, we will have the opportunity to stay on top of it, and a better ability to treat people effected, helping ensure we don't reach widespread stay at home orders a second time.
That's what we should be striving for, anyway. If we can get it back under control, the summer will help us stay on top of it and prepare for the next peak. If we're smart, there's no reason why we'd need to stay locked down for more than a couple more months right now. If we stop now (or in two weeks), there will be a huge surge in deaths as we do not have the ability to control it.
But we certainly don't need to stay locked down for a year or more until we develop a vaccine for it.
Politically, Trump would fail to save the economy, and would be more fucked than ever as far as his reelection chances. The economy isn't going to magically jump back up to where it was with all these job losses. That would be a slow recovery even without a pandemic going on and there's no way around it.
