South Korea and the USA had their first confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the SAME day 1-26-20. A week to 10 days ago South Korea had tested 100,000 people the USA had tested 426. 
Originally Posted by adav8s28
SK had the SARS outbreak hit their shores in 2003. They bungled that response BADLY. That is why they are so much better prepared for this. I imagine USA will be next time a pandemic hits...but that is "next time".
While I think the lack of testing capability is huge, in the sense of tracking as many COVID-19 cases as possible, to see how the virus affects people (I don't trust the data being put out by the CCP influenced scientists, including some who have been working with the WHO), I think President Trump's rather early response to close off travel from certain foreign nations may have mitigated some of the initial spread of the virus. Plus, if you are asymptomatic (virus or not), you aren't going to be tested anyways. We were never going to be testing the entire population of the United States, even if we had 10's of millions of test kits. At most, you will do as people have been told for the past month or so, and self-quarantine. If you are showing symptoms, regardless if it is caused by COVID-19, you are going to told to self-quarantine unless you need medical attention and need to get to a hospital.
To answer the original point made...I think, economically, we cannot be shut down forever. We would see more homelessness and poverty than The Great Depression. In recent polling, the majority of Americans have more concern over their finances being affected by a long economic shutdown versus the actual health effects of this virus. At some point, we will have to "start the engine again" and get people back to work. It will be a much more careful environment with a hair-trigger to self-quarantine upon any symptoms, but living like it is the apocalypse is not a tenable strategy for the survivors of all of this.
