I'm surprised by how seemingly unprepared the US is about this. Europe's cases are exploding as we speak. Several countries have already said it's now not containable (Australia, UK) and they're now trying to delay it so as not to overload their health systems. And this rapid change of plans happened in the last 3 days or so. I'm not talking about people panic buying or about people worrying unnecessarily. But should health authorities be more preemptive, like cancel large gatherings?
I think the authorities are starting to conclude that there's pretty much nothing to be done about it but let it run its course.
China is the only country where they've managed to slow down its progression. But that was at the cost of imposing draconian travel restrictions and locking down a large population center. And there's still the question of what happens when they remove the travel restrictions and let life go back to normal. There's every indication that the flu will resurge and go back to circulating full-strength again. The coronavirus is acting pretty much like the standard flu: Circulating pretty freely, going through multiple waves, and hitting a big chunk of the population.
So it's a bind. You can't just lock everyone down until the warm weather hits and the flu season ends. That will ruin the economy and result in massive shortages of consumer goods. And you'll still probably see the coronavirus return in full force again next flu season.
Comparing it to the standard flu: We all have a pretty good natural immunity to the standard flu from many years of exposure, so the standard flu is mostly just an annoyance. Whereas the coronavirus is a first-timer for everyone. So none of us have any natural immunity to the coronavirus.
Apparently the coronavirus is actually quite a mild flu for most healthy people. Many healthy people may not even realize that they've caught it. But it could take a harsh toll on the elderly and the infirm on the first wave through. (See my previous posts on that subject.) Subsequent years will presumably be less of a problem because everyone will pick up some immunity from that first exposure.
So that's the bind: Lock down the population centers to spare the elderly and the infirm, ruining the economy and causing massive shortages of everything, or admit that there's probably not much to be done about it and let nature take its course.
I'm basing all this, of course, on just a few articles that I've read. The authorities in various countries are still trying to see if there's any way they can buy some time with limited quarantines, bans on public gatherings, and other such measures. But no one has found a real good solution yet for taming this thing, as I understand it.
Again, this is all just what I've seen from a few articles on the subject, and it's still early in the game. Things may yet sort out differently from what I'm predicting. And I don't have any medical background, so others may know more about this than me.