Just curious, if you were in the White House or Governors seat,
How would you approach the pandemic?
State:
1. Initiate lockdown for up to 21 days to allow time for #2.
2. Construct temporary medical facilities to handle majority of cases that require hospitalization.
3. Remove restrictions, make common-sense recommendations on how the more-susceptible should take steps to best protect themselves.
4. Work with legislators to ensure reasonable (ie 2-4 weeks) of unemployment is available for those affected directly (tested positive) or high-risk (doctors note/other classification, but with higher bar then "I'm scared and want to stay home").
Federal:
1. Give guidance to States on best practices and assistance with procuring necessary equipment/meds/related. This presumes States did not have plan/clue to begin with, which is fairly far-fetched.
2. Consider source/transmission points and put in temporary mitigation strategies (ie travel bans).
3. Pass legislation that spends $500 billion to construct permanent medical facilities that are only to be used in pandemic situation. 1 facility per given area of a given population. Put FEMA or Military (or both) in charge of operating these. Create a long term plan to provide for staffing when needed including consideration of military-style draft to pull in qualified staffing when necessary.
Once #3 is accomplished, 1-2 of the State-level items become unnecessary in the future, however if there ever was a truly overwhelming pandemic, the States would still have that playbook to follow to augment what the Feds provide.
The above is basically what the "experts" were telling us to do, but somewhere along the line those in charge thought that our existing healthcare system should take the brunt of this situation because they are "healthcare". However, our healthcare system is about $ and keeping beds warm with high-turnover to make that money. No hospital sits idle with empty beds and excess capacity, they should have only been there to catch the overflow as necessary.
The following year, we'd all look at the new Fed facilities the $500,000,000,000.00 built, sitting empty and doing nothing and say what a waste. Yet we've already given away twice that amount with what to show for it?
[PS - I'm not convinced of the conspiracy theories at this point]