+/- 40,000 confirmed cases. Less than .0001% of the population. They are only testing people with symptoms so the number of positive cases will continue to increase. The effects and aftermath is going to be real but I am fairly certain to this point the fear and reaction is manufactured.

This is not about "getting it", Two weeks ago we had 761 cases in America, today we have 49594, with 622 deaths and 361 recoveries. People die quicker than they recover, so we better start seeing that number change drastically very soon! Recovery takes about 16 days. We will soon see the death rate! Forget about the death rate reported in China and Iran! This is what everyone is waiting on to determine how to proceed forward. My guess is April 6th or 13th a decision will be made to go back to work, at least for the majority of the country.

I suppose whatever happens is supposed to happen.right?

So many of the deniers are looking for absolutes. Doesn't happen very often in cases like these. You just have to go with the best probability for success.

This is now a math problem involving probabilities and economics. At some point, the cost of saving additional lives by putting the economy into a self-induced coma exceeds the value of those lives. Hopefully the actions taken to date have slowed the spread of the virus enough to buy time to test effective therapeutics, significantly reducing the loss of life. I would like to see most regions in this country return to something closer to "normal" within two weeks (exceptions for hot spots which probably need to have stricter controls). And people do have the power to reduce the risk by altering behavior (distancing, hand washing, etc.).

I don't think the POTUS gets to make the decision for everyone to go back to work next week. Seems I remember that the restrictions on activities have been put in place by Governors and Mayors. I don't know that he can override them.

Not looking for absolutes, just looking for some leadership, common sense and prudence from our elected officials in charge of managing this crisis no matter what party they are part of.

NY City stats show that 92% of the deaths had underlying conditions.

Not hard to see that the vulnerable and elderly need to be taken care of. So I wonder what the mortality rates look like when you take out the numbers of elderly or with underlying conditions that have died from this?

I'm not disagreeing with your overall point here, but what exactly is the dollar amount we plug in for the value of a human life?

He can make the call to withhold federal money at the state and local level. That will change a lot of those local leaders tune quickly.

I remember a few days someone on here was declaring from the roof tops that zero healthy people had been killed by this virus. A few days later we now know that's not the case at all. Remember, those with underlying conditions die first. Healthy people take a lot longer to die. I agree 100% those with underlying health conditions are at far greater risk, I'm just saying it's too early to know exactly what the risk is to healthy people.

Does he have that authority? Not sure, maybe he does but his main priority now is votes and he is too likely to go against local leaders who have as much a bully pulpit as he does.

You can’t ignore that group. That’s not how this works. They are part of the population who risk getting infected if we can’t slow this down. It doesn’t matter if I get sick. I will very likely be fine. But my wife’s grandmother lives with us. If I get sick, so does she, and she dies. Do the elderly’s lives have less value because they are closer to a natural death than the rest of us?

His social usefulness is not all that great either.

Haven't read all of it, but isn't Carnival donating a couple cruise ships on both/either coast to become hospital ships? There's an extra 5000 beds right there along with the Navy hospital ships. Which I think is great. One way on and off and make that a total decontamination room.