"We must implement social distance--do things to keep the virus from spreading. These steps save lives; don't do them and you kill."
That means ... if ill, you self-isolate in the home and you don't leave home; otherwise, stay at home unless you must leave; social distance outside the home, unless it's a must-do situatin; don't travel more often than you *must* for essentials; don't travel farther than you must--so air traffic should be done to truly urgent, essential things; close borders.
Notice we like some of these. We hate some of these. Some we love or hate depending on who's locked down. Or who gave the order. Heck, I've seen politicians complain that their cities have shelter-in-place orders because their death toll is taking off, but rural areas don't. As though the difference between being on a city bus with 50 strangers and being in a harvester-combine and working with the same 2 people you've worked with for the last month was meaningless.
This is always balanced with, "If I can't move, I can't work. I can't earn money for food and shelter. If everybody's in that situation, the economy fails. Poverty, recession."
You see the tension in posts where one person will say this has a class divide built into it and the poor will be disproportionately hurt--and that's an argument *against* stay-at-home orders. At a higher level, it's the US economy, and since Trump's pushing that it's dangerous to even suggest that total economic collapse isn't worth it. In this case, it's part of the tri-state area. It'll hurt their conomy a lot, it won't strangle them because the quarantine won't be absolute. But it'll hurt. And the argument against it is, ultimately economic--the same one that those defending the poor use, the same one Trump uses (it may defend his flattery, but that doesn't mean there aren't other things included in the argument).
You reduce the spread. If you don't send in any help, that's "letting it burn itself out." But in the end, all mitigation strategies do is allow it to burn itself out *everywhere* over time. The only real benefits are two: extending it might last into when we have treatments that shorten the illness or lessen its severity OR until we've developed a vaccine; it'll reduce the peak and let each patient get the best treatment, instead of causing equipment and medication rationing.
Here's a possibility. If it's not contained but *continues* to spread from the greater NYC area, it means that *other* areas will see a faster, sharper increase. That will require even *more* ventilators (etc.), and those areas will be in competition with NYC. In the end, letting it spread means, just as in the first paragraph, killing people.
Let's be coldly utilitarian in all this. Everything else may have a more rewarding emotional or political power payoff, but it leads to less social good (unless we confuse our wants with societal good, which is quite a narcissistic thing to do).
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