It is worth reading this paper from the Imperial College COVID-19 response team. This paper came out early yesterday and drove some of the policy decisions we saw rolled out in the US and UK yesterday.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imp...16-03-2020.pdf
I read this last night, and it is a lot to take in. My takeaway was that unless we literally want to see the next Great Depression at some point we are going to have to accept that there will be some heightened risk of getting sick/dying over the next 12-18 months and go back to our lives. It is simply not sustainable to do what it would require to keep this completely 100% at bay. It would require 18 months of what the US is currently attempting to do for 15 days.
The solution may be to apply these extreme measures on a rolling basis, and regionally on an as-needed basis. We will also need to continue to come up with new and innovative ways to live our lives that reduces the rate of transmission.
Of course there is always the hope that we are able to innovate and come up with better ways to treat the disease. A vaccine is likely impossible until 2021.