I don't know what's gonna happen. But I think there is maybe just the teensiest tiniest bit too much pessimism about how/when the US will manage to open society/the economy back up. Like people here are an 9 on pessimism scale when they should be at 6 or 7 or 8. Quick points:
1) The US did better than you might have thought in *shutting things down*. Transformational change within a few weeks. Opening back up is harder in many ways. But that seems like a relevant data point. And we did OK the shutting-down despite a lack of federal leadership.
2) The incentives to safely start back up are decently well aligned. Trump, governors etc may all be staking re-election upon it. In general things that help them will help individual citizens. Also, in general the things that help small (& large?) businesses will help citizens.
3) Time is knowledge, to a greater degree than I think people are accounting for. Learning more about how the disease itself behaves could help a lot. So could learning from other countries or how different states are reacting. We can copy what's working and avoid what isn't.
