The problem is that this virus won’t “run its course”. For the flu, “run its course” means that everyone who has not had a flu shot or is susceptible in any way, has contracted the flu, and therefore now has significant immunity.

But for Coronavirus, only those who have some immunity are those who have been infected — a tiny part of the population. So “run its course” will mean that everyone gets infected — everyone.

And if we shelter in place, but then after a month stop sheltering in place, the virus will come back with a vengeance. All it takes is one person to re-start the pandemic — anywhere in the world.

So sheltering in place can only achieve one thing: buy time to develop a vaccine or medicine that reduces the lethality. Shelting in place is not a viable long term strategy: if we do that for more than a few weeks, we will destroy the global economy and perhaps even destroy civilization.

There should be a hard time limit on sheltering in place, and the emphasis should be having those who are vulnerable doing the sheltering — not everyone else. For most people, the coronavirus merely makes them sick for a week and then they recover — like with the flu. So sheltering is really only to protect those who are particularly vulnerable — those with other illnesses or of advanced age. Those are the ones who need to shelter in place: others do not.

Since sheltering in place is not a viable long term strategy, and can only buy us time for a short while, the primary strategy should be to identify those drugs that show promise for treating the illness: these. We don’t know for sure how effective these are, so we should be mass producing all of them and distributing them into stockpiles, so that they are ready to go as soon as their respective trials complete. If one proves effective and the others do not, then we start administering that one to those who are infected, and discard the others. That will cost money, but a-lot less than the economic harm of stopping our entire economy for an indeterminate period of time.

The only way to end this without having millions of deaths among those who are particularly vulnerable is to develop a vaccine. The trials for those will take months; we can’t shelter in place for months: it would destroy our civilization. It might even precipitate war.

The vulnerable — old and sick — need to shelter in place. The rest of us need to resume our lives; and the drugs that show promise need to be distributed so that they are ready to use as soon as their trials complete.