I'm convinced. No more seat-belts or exercise for me /sarc
Seriously @jmyrlefuller I think that is a flawed argument. The President's 15 day, and 30 day pause were so our healthcare system could catch up with the virus. It bought time to build beds, and buy PPE and ventilators. It did work. NY cases have dropped significantly. Now infections and deaths are rising in other area, and the supplies we have replenished can be utilized in those areas to reduce deaths.
I fear the states opening back up before it was safe, like GA, will once again have to shut down to protect their population before they are forced to. The well run states don't want to be burdened by the irresponsible states, and eventually the states themselves are going to have to ban travel to states with renewed epidemics.
We'll likely have a better idea how well reducing restrictions worked in a few weeks.
I don't disagree with you on that—and to an extent I was being facetious. There are places like New York where it has worked very well. But even in New York State, you see a disparity. On one hand, New York City is working great. But go upstate to Buffalo, and they've been stuck on a plateau, if not a slight increase, for weeks now. This despite the same policies, the same timing, and as far as we can tell, the same compliance. So what's the difference? Is more of Buffalo's workforce "essential" and unable to work from home? NYC certainly has a lot of workers working white-collar jobs that can be done from home, which isn't true for a lot of metro areas, and the health care industry seems to have a bigger impact on Buffalo's economy, putting more of their denizens at risk. Do more Buffalonians live with their extended families?
You see that in a lot of places where the initial impact was not as hard as it was in NYC, especially on the West Coast. That's another trouble when it comes to looking at nationwide numbers: this virus did not hit the country all at once. You're seeing a bunch of little curves pop up at different times.
But you look at NYC, and it took an extraordinary effort—and possibly a small amount of herd immunity from starting the process so late—to achieve the results they did.