In an ideal world, the shelter-in-place orders would have done a few things: - Slowed the spread of the virus, so it won't overwhelm the capacity of a nation's

In an ideal world, the shelter-in-place orders would have done a few things: - Slowed the spread of the virus, so it won't overwhelm the capacity of a nation's healthcare system - Build up testing and tracing capacity to track future spread. In the US, the SIP orders are an overwhelming success on the first point, and cases are slowly starting to drop off. On the second point, the US is still far, far behind on testing. For a nation the size of the US, there needs to be something on the order of 2 million tests per day, compared to the the current capacity of roughly 300,000. I cannot overstate how important this testing failure is; without it, businesses will be closed for longer, more jobs will be lost permanently, and the citizens get frustrated that they're stuck at home without any income. If there was adequate testing capacity, businesses could reopen with precautions, and the government could sustainably offer benefits to those testing positive so they can afford to stay home and not spread the virus any further. If there isn't adequate testing capacity, even with precautions, future waves are more likely, and any of those waves can overwhelm the healthcare system.