We haven't had real lockdowns anywhere. We've had please-stay-home recommendations. If we had a sufficiently strict lockdown early on, we could have brought tr

We haven't had real lockdowns anywhere. We've had please-stay-home recommendations. If we had a sufficiently strict lockdown early on, we could have brought transmission down to near 0, identified all new cases (and quarantined them away from the healthy population), set up strict testing at every border/airport, and been basically back to normal in 2 months, like China was. These deaths of despair are just another consequence of the Trump administration's total failure to grab the bull by the horns and come up with a plan. Trump's refusal to act forced state and city governments to figure out how to handle this, which created a major conflict of interests. State and city governments are largely funded by sales taxes, so shutting down bars/restaurants/retail/events/etc takes a crucial funding source away from state/city govts, but to stop transmission of the virus, those businesses can't be open. State/city govts can't print money like the Federal govt, and the GOP Senators are refusing to provide funds to state/city govts, which lead to the current explosion in case counts, which will just keep this going longer. TL,DR: we absolutely need stricter management of this, or it will drag on forever.