Fall football

Yes, not only have they half-assed their lockdown(s) but they also are lying about their numbers, esp. the dead numbers.  While it's true that deaths are a lagging indicator (as it takes time for the disease to worsen and terminate after intubation, the present regime in Turkey headed by criminal Erdogan is 'managing' the numbers to minimize how bad it is there.  The main outbreak was/is in the largest city Istanbul and intelligent observers there noted that reported deaths in the city far exceeded reported deaths in previous years.  I think it was 3x higher even though Erdogan's lie machinery keeps spinning out the same 100 or so deaths across the country per day.  The lying is meant to protect the image of Turkey and Erdogan, plus protect the image of a safe tourist destination (hugely important to their economy), and protect the image of a modern, effective medical system which is also important to medical tourism which has become bigger there in recent years. It's from the same playbook as with strongman dictator types everywhere; Keep repeating the lie(s) until people just accept it as truth.  Oh, and lock up journalists and anyone else who challenges the lies.  

One more thing about Covid-19 and Turkey.  Erdogan's criminal regime has imprisoned tens of thousands for political dissent, connections with Kurdish activism (automatically labled "terrorism", connections with so-called Gulenism from the FETO conspiracy, and murky "Deep State" enemies.  You can bet that you'll easily fall into one of those categories if you criticize or resist Erdogan's dictates.  Hell, people are being sentenced to stiff prison terms for "insulting" Erdogan.  This post would be plenty enough for me to be imprisoned if I lived in Turkey.  His henchmen patrol social media regularly. 

But here's the kicker:  Because of the Covid pandemic, even Turkey is releasing prisoners by the thousands to ensure that they not die in prison outbreaks of the disease.  Mafia men, murderers, child-molesters, rapists, down to embezzlers and all the rest.  EXCEPT NO POLITICAL PRISONERS ARE TO BE RELEASED.  None.. Anyone against Erdogan in the slightest way stays put and at the mercy of a raging Covid outbreak in prison. And you can bet there will be little if any medical care for those who are infected. That is Erdogan''s bottom line; No Political Opposition no matter what.

For those interested in learning more, I highly recommend Ahval News online which reports fairly and in depth on Turkish affairs.  Of course they are based outside of Turkey.  

I'm guessing that this board post has run its course, but I owe you the courtesy of a reply, so I'll write one even if it's never read.

Exponential growth is, indeed, the problem.  And, the exponent is greatly influenced by the number of people with whom you interact on a daily basis: hence, the logic for stay-at-home orders.  But, what works in NYC -- the highest population density in the country -- may be overkill elsewhere.  Instead, we have all manners of governors one-upping each other.

Do you honestly believe that Iron County, Michigan, needed a lockdown order?  Even granting that rural hospital care may involve transfer to the nearest large city, your average day just involves so many fewer contacts than the average New Yorker's.

But, here's the rub: you asked about the 18-month strawman, stating that nobody is actually saying they want to shut the economy down for 18 months. Au contraire, Gavin Newsome seems to think that it's a good idea to keep large events shuttered in California "until" there is an effective treatment. Why?  Easy: exponential growth.  As soon as we try to go back to normal, the exponential growth can begin anew.  There are absolutely going to be people who will say "not until there's a vaccine" as if science will obey a timeline.

Stay at home orders were also supposed to help buy time so that we could increase testing, so that we’d have a much more economic way to slow the spread.   Unfortunately we have not progressed as far on that as one might hope

This feels like ex post facto reasoning to me.  I don't remember anyone suggesting that up front; I may have missed it, though.  Regardless, I'm of the opinion that this virus is too widespread already for test/trace/quarantine to be effective.  Even if we're willing to give up all of our civil rights and let the government take responsibility for our every waking moment, I don't think it's tractable.  The entire economy might have to be devoted to nothing but contact tracing.

I look at NYC and see a place that put shutdown orders in place a bit too late, but still managed to avert utter catastrophe.   You see a place that would not have been much different without the shutdown orders

NYC is the one place I'd be willing to bend.  I just don't think it's representative due to the population density, prevalence of mass transit, etc.

I see a country that would have had many places looking like NYC or worse without shutdown orders, you don’t.

Agreed.  And if the population prevalence statistics that we're seeing even approach accurate -- I'm talking about the New York and USC studies, with better methodology, not the Bakersfield or Stanford ones -- then I'll double down on my statement.  I've believed from day 1 that this virus has been in the US since December or January.  There's a ton of travel between China and the US, and given the virus's increasingly-well-known propensity to spread asymptomatically, it would have been more amazing if it weren't here than if it were.

If community spread was already present throughout February, that suggests that the virus does not spread nearly as virulently as it was thought, and therefore it reduces the R factor to be expected, and hence the exponent in the exponential growth.

It only makes sense to invest in slowing the spread if it saves more lives than we're losing by shutting down the economy.  I remain unconvinced, which makes me doubly upset about the civil liberties issue.  Now I end up feeling like I'm sacrificing my rights to help.. almost nobody*, in the end.

* There's a nonzero value in slowing the spread of any deadly disease, even if the same number of people eventually die; the extra time that they get is absolutely worth something.