Who can outline a way to shelter the elderly (age 60+, for Better or worse, approximately 70 million people) from the rest of the population. Keep in mind that the majority of nursing home workers are <60, as are healthcare workers, and delivery drivers, etc.
Also we need to isolate patients over 50 with comorbidities such as CAD, obesity, diabetes as they are also high risk. Roughly 1:3 of adults have one of these problems so that’s another 40m / 3 = 13m.
Then there is the 20-50yo, about 20% of whom have one of these comorbidities, so that’s another 130/5 = 26m.
That’s 110m, or a third of the population. Should they be provided a stipend or basic income to stay at home until a vaccine is developed? If we gave them all 1200 x 6 months (early end of widespread vaccine timeline), that’s about $800b, which seems something we could afford. Just have to cut down on the defense budget for a few years.
The other 2/3 can go about their daily activities, and with an IFR of 0.1%, that’s only 220k dead! With a hospitalization rate of 1%, we’d only have about 2 millions patients, roughly twice our hospital bed capacity for the country, and have to defer all other healthcare for the year to accommodate the covid patients. Let’s be extra generous and assume the 30% of US living in rural areas won’t get it at all. Still doesn’t help much.
1/3 of economy collapsed, healthcare system collapsed and a quarter of million dead sounds like quite a bargain! /s
In all seriousness, it’s a hard question and I don’t think anyone has a good answer yet. Especially dealing with the survivors and their disabilities.