The genie is out of the bottle, no way to put it back. You can blame one person, but there's no point to do so, the virus will spread anyway, it isn't a local problem anymore, but something that effects all of humanity.
The only way to prevent it is becoming Sentinel Island. Put an ocean around you and kill everyone on sight, and even then some morons make landfall. I wonder how North Korea is doing. Or how that will be used for political goals in unstable countries, could become interesting in regions like south america.
One of the few strategies left is to slow it down to be able to treat severe cases, sounds quite reasonable right now. But people will get infected anyway sooner or later. Until a vaccine is available, but the guesses about that speak about a year from now at best.
Most Politicians cant risk being blamed not to have done enough, so we go into full shutdown, noone will blame them for that no matter what damage. Here there are new rules made public right now, pretty much a curfew except for going to work and buying food. Army gets mobilized to enforce it, and to help with logistical problems. All shops apart from food and pharmacies, all restaurant and bars closed. Parks and playgrounds too.
Anyone can tell me why supermarkets (wich are tiny, cramped things compared to Walmart) are "safe", huge hardware stores where you can keep 10m distance to everyone are not?
If that goes on for half a year it will be interesting how suizide rates and deaths due to people not seeing a doctor in time develope. A lot of people will lose everything, small shop owners still have to pay rent and taxes. Pain in the chest - ah, most likely just reflux and not a heart attack, no point in risking getting infected. That could, in my opinion, get as bad as the virus quickly.
Friend of mine with severe health problems got blood test results, very bad kidney indicators - her doctor is closed because there was a corona patient there, got an appointment for end of june - if that is a serious issue she wont need it then.
Everyone will die, for one reason or another, there are many dangers all around us, we are just used to them, we blank them out in our daily life, but they are still there.
There are other possible strategies too, like protect those at risk, but don't worry too much about the vast majority that will not have a big problem with the infection, and build up a herd immunity that will protect everyone else in the long run. I somewhat doubt that would work as intended, at least for the "protect the weak people" part.
It's kind of interesting how different societies react to restrictions, well, here people are pretty used to obey orders, normally that's why I like it better closer to Balkan. It's a big first time experiment, well, not first time, but some things changed a lot since WW1.
Well, as the curse goes: interesting times to live in.
