The economies in countries that have done little social distancing are still getting hit pretty hard.

So we basically have two options:
1. Social distance to save a bunch of lives, and have a bad economy for a while.
2. Don't social distance, lose a whole bunch more lives, and have a bad economy for a while.



If we had done a strict nationwide distancing in early March, we could have probably snuffed out what virus we had, which would have given us time to ramp up our testing and contact tracing abilities. Then we possibly could have loosened general restrictions while restricting/isolating new arrivals.

But we didn't.