There are a lot of factors at play here, and it's highly unlikely anyone has enough information to know the exact optimum response. From a pure health perspect

There are a lot of factors at play here, and it's highly unlikely anyone has enough information to know the exact optimum response. From a pure health perspective, physical isolation is taxing both physically and mentally. Not everyone has a home gym; is 6 months of sedentary behavior going to cause more cardiovascular complications than coronavirus in the same at-risk groups? Economics also has health and well-being effects for the many people. When we flatten the curve, we extend the length of sedentary behavior but reduce the number of people turned away from the hospital. However, as a previous article [0] describes, if we end up turning 90% of people away anyway, because the virus is just too contagious to control, will sedentary people have weakened immune systems or encounter other complications at a rate that challenges the benefit? As another person who doesn't really know: if I were the feds, I would be using this time to mass manufacture masks and testing for every single American to wear daily, and once those were produced and delivered, reactivate significant parts of the economy, with voluntary precautions. The mask culture in Japan may be contributing to the slower spread. It will go down as a great gaffe all the people who shamed others from not wearing masks in the western world. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598009