This shutdown is proving too effective in many places in slowing the burn through of the virus and will result in an even longer time to achieve burn through, widely geographically dispersed.
We can’t seem to decide if we want to snuff the virus out or let it burn through. We’re engaged in efforts to do both and will succeed at neither while killing the economy.
I think I can try to suggest why there is the inconsistency which you correctly observe, but I hope no one thinks I am trying to defend any policy or practice.
During sars 1 in 2002-2004 Korea suffered greatly. It is their planning, except for the universal provision of facemasks, that has informed this semi quasi-quarantine.
Analysis revealed that the greatest suffering, and the overwhelming of the hospital system traced to super-spreader events, now called SSE’s. However, you cannot identify those super spreader individuals until it is too late. They are out there now. SSE’s have already been described with COVID-19, which is reasonable as the Virus SARS-CoV-2 itself is a close variant almost identical variant of SARS-CoV.
There is no thought of eradication this time as the primary difference with the new virus is that whereas SARS was not optimized to infect your cells, this new one is. I fear that I cannot suggest that we snuff the virus out, because of the nature of the germ.
Churches...Doctor’s office waiting rooms, and hospital waiting rooms....Large groups in closed spaces...But there were no cases proved of SSE’s in the open air. Here is a link to a COVID-19 SSE in a church:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51609840
My belief is that this virus will not do well in the warm weather. It will plague the southern hemisphere during their winter and it will be back among us, without ever having truly left us, next “flu season”.
I think Trump wrestles with that too, part of the reason he's pushing as much as possible to the states in terms of decisions about how tight to lock down.
But yep - agreed.