Maybe worth re-emphasizing: there are a lot of uncertainties in the long-term coronavirus outlook. The column below has a good overview of them. But the correct policy responses *for right now* are pretty robust to those uncertainties. nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opi…
(The responses include: substantially increase social distancing, substantially increase hospital capacity, substantially increase testing, do as much as you can to stabilize the economy so temporary problems don't become permanent ones, and crash on finding treatments/vaccines.)
As you go further out in time, uncertainties increase. In terms of social distancing, the correct attitude for governments may be like:
"We NEED to do this AGGRESSIVELY for 2-3 weeks. Then revaluate. But it could be 2-3 months, or off-and-on in waves for 18 months. It depends."
"We NEED to do this AGGRESSIVELY for 2-3 weeks. Then revaluate. But it could be 2-3 months, or off-and-on in waves for 18 months. It depends."
How do you communicate that message ^^^ to the public? I don't know. I'm trying to imagine the honest, internal dialogs that governments should be having among themselves, not making recommendations on communications strategy.
