Estimates are 70% infection before herd immunity kicks in. That’s 2,290,400 dead Americans at just 1% mortality rate.
As most will be older people and most older Americans are affiliated with the Republican Party this doesn’t seem like a good re-election strategy. 
Besides, the American and European economies will collapse and China will be ascendant. 
‘Merica First!
Well, I guess I will be dead in the next month or so. See ya later fellas
your assuming China doesnt already have a bigger problem than the USA and the EU re financial stability
Unlesss… to prevent the coronavirus from being spread in voting booths that ideally every American over the age of 18 should visit in November the election is called off & the Illuminati that controls the House & Senate crowns a king to save lives???
We all got it coming eventually. Keep your boots on.
I’m sure the cretin who would be king has spent a lot of time dreaming about that scenario.
I just watched Trump on TV saying: “We have tremendous control over this virus.”
Well, that must be quite a comforting statement for the American people, wish we could say that here but then you cannot have them all… Or is he living on another planet?
We do have control. I’m at home. I cannot get it from here. You can stay home, or you can go to China. It’s up to you. Where people go cause the spread. We control that.
Here is Will Dearden who call himself a " Quantitative Researcher" with a model.
EDIT: Key assumption:
Let’s assume that there are two populations of roughly equal size. One has a head start on the other in terms of number of infected. Let’s assume it has five times as many asymptomatic people as the US.
The effect of banning international travel is the shift from solid lines to dashed lines, which is minimal. The reason is that it has already spread to the United States. Even though other countries have a head start, allowing travel only shifts the trajectory of the infection spread up a few days.
There is one main drawback to this model: the effect of travel itself. When people fly, they are traveling in close quarters with others, in recycled air, and with reduced immune systems. So the act of travel itself temporarily spikes
β
for those traveling. Nevertheless, this model shows that the most effective way to reduce the spread of the coronavirus is consistent and extended social distancing.
The experts at the WHO and others were saying travel restrictions may not be effective and further that they may result in undesirable unforeseen consequences such as crowding at U.S. air ports may have inadvertently turned the airports into virus hotspots.
Found this at Marginal Revolution blog which is reliably more or less neutral, maybe leans libertarian politicaly,
Singapore has realized its only travelers that are infecting people as the local shutdown has just about stopped any expansion.
The are also aware people are coming for treatment knowing they are sick.
Arrive by boat and its 14 days in the anchorage.
( except Malaysians on car and boat trips from Malaysia)
They’re one of the few places that jumped on this right away and have kept to a linear expansion model. External quarantine makes huge sense for them.
It’s hard to tell with that chart but if the number of people under consideration were a few hundred million the small difference between lines may be a considerable number of people.
Then it’s a political exercise: how much damage to the economy are we willing to accept for how many lives preserved?
China and other proactive countries are going to suffer a different problem. As they stopped the spread so fast their population will remain susceptible. That won’t matter as long as the country is walled off. But that walling off of a country will cause serious economic trouble as long as it’s in place.
The UK seems to be taking the other route. Herd immunity by mass infection. This, of course, will kill a lot of people but the economy won’t have to shut down for an extended period. In other words lives lost per GDP preserved
Interesting point.
Sorry folks, all these analogies, graphs, charts and what not are rather noise to me. I am able to stay home and watch tv if I like. Doing my part to avoid the crowds. My freezer is full, and have ample amounts of TP. “Not Hoarding” Have a good watchdog that will eat the ass out of an alligator to protect my bride and I if you think my stuff belongs to you.
That’s nice, maybe you will survive long enough to understand that a crisis like this shows us a great deal about the nature, values, and wisdom of our leaders and the strength or weakness of our nation.
So far we have not seen much to indicate the world you see when you pull your head out of the sand will be a pleasant place.
It’s a cost/benefit thing. Where should resources be used? With travel restrictions the numbers are going to move (by this model) by less then 0.1 %. With social distancing the numbers move big.
Point is that strong travel bans may seem to make sense intuitively but to me it seems that the numbers don’t work out. I could very well be wrong but can anyone make the travel ban work mathematically?
Travel ban Canadian style:
Closed border to all except citizens, permanent residents and US citizens. PM Trudeau says " the country is taking ``increasingly aggressive steps’’ to keep everyone safe. Good move.
The country currently has 324 confirmed cases out of a population of 38 million.
Let’s take your delta 0.1% (0.001) value. I know it’s not but let’s just say.
327,200,000 [Americans] * 0.7 [herd immunity] * 0.05 [mortality] * 0.001 [travel ban] = 11,452 dead
That’s a lot of dead people… ok, actually it’s not. But from a political point of view it is. No one is getting elected by tossing 11,452 voters in the bin (because most of them are older Republicans).
From a brutally economic point of view one could argue the herd immunity route could be best. After all it’s mostly old folk who would die and they no longer contribute as much to GDP. It could be a gain as old folk use Social Security and have medical costs. Granted the loss to the parts of industry that cater to old folk would hurt but I’m guessing (big guess) that it would pale next to the losses of slowing down our economy for months if not a year.
Europe and the United States will be able to reopen their boarders to the world soon enough. China, Singapore and South Korea will have to remain vigilant and lock down every time one gets through until a vaccine is produced.
