Increased gun and ammo sales? Do Americans believe that they can kill the virus by firing into the air?

They could probably have done more for fighting the virus with having folding@home running on their servers for a week or so

Let's be realistic... That won't happen, the populace of the USA will cry that it is "socialism" and a waste of tax payer money, they would rather give tax breaks to big business and the rich.

Under normal circumstances I would agree. But what's happening right now is not normal. No unemployed or poor person will refuse a UBI program, if life doesn't go back to normal sooner than later there is literally no other solution. 

Let's not make assumptions on what the inflicted want and doesn't want right now just because they're Americans.... 

I think the experts who educated themselves for decades of their careers would beg to differ that it was a non issue when they were shouting at us in January to take it seriously while WHO played politcal games with China. And btw, sense you're all good with immunity, good luck rolling the die on the mutations, it's "just the flu, bro" in that regard cause it will mutate just as fast and while your at it roll another die that you don't get a reinfection which is being reported now and rumoured for weeks to be 14% of cases. 

This is a big part of the reason why it got to this point and will get much worse. The only way to stop it is to stop it early. However then everyone would have been crying that it is/was not necessary so that path was not taken. Plus most people couldn't imagine what exponential growth actually entails, most still can't. 

Currently we're in the hammer phase, it can still be slowed like Italy shows. If everyone actually does their part it will be stopped dead in its tracks in a couple weeks, it doesn't have to take longer than the max incubation time. However the numbers are still too low for a lot of people to think of it as anything more than a nasty flu. Perhaps instead of numbers the news should show what's going in Italy in the hospitals. But that would cause other people to panic more again and do stupid things at the other end of the spectrum. Humanity sucks, we can't get together to execute a solution that will work.

Easter Monday is 16 days from now, with current growth rates in Europe and the USA, Easter Sunday will be adding 320K new cases to Europe that day and 21K deaths that day, 286K new cases for the USA and 5300 deaths. It should be much less than that since social distancing is having some effect already but it's only been a few days since France extended the lock down to the rest of the country while many places are still not all that serious about enforcing/encouraging social distancing. It's going to grow until Easter at least.

If everyone does their part, stuff can go back to relatively normal in a month. However we may already be too late to have a normal left to go back to. The health care system in Italy and Spain are already suffering major losses.

Yet if people keep at the notion that it's not necessary, worse for the economy, and keep going on about as usual, it will only take longer and do exponentially more damage, both to the people and to the economy.

And how well is your economy going to do when other countries isolate you to save themselves from re-infection?

I don't think it's necessary that the people of any country have to care about what happens to jobs in other countries. Keeping their eyes on their own country is enough to recognize that unemployment numbers are rising at a much faster pace than confirmed corona cases.

In Austria we have reached five digit figures for corona infections this week while the number of newly recorded unemployed people over the course of the last two weeks has comfortably exceeded 100,000. The likelihood to be someone or know someone who lost their job is far higher than to be someone or know someone who is infected by corona. I think that's going to hold true in every country and that's why the perception of what is important and what should be done will change rather quickly. The currently prevalent solidarity to save lives will change to an expected payback, such as those risk groups who are now being supported being asked to show solidarity in return by opting to isolate themselves while the majority can begin to return to their normal lives.

Easter Monday being a deadline in quite a few countries is bound to be a catalyst too. When people can't spend time with relatives and/or friends during Easter, then the demand among the population to lift/change the measures will be amplified, because enough is enough.

Sounds like a village where nobody would want to go because there's nothing of interest there. That's exactly the thing, though: The hotspots are the places where there is a lot of tourism, but it doesn't take more than a few kilometers away from such an area in order to be a lot safer.

When more than 90% of infected people have only mild to moderate symptoms, then expecting death for the majority is plain foolish.

I only watch Austrian and German news and the situation of Italy is talked about and depicted. It's why the majority of the population here and in Germany is fine with the measures that have been taken. The minority that isn't fine with it splits into two camps, of which the opinion that the measures should be even stricter is more popular than the opinion that the current restrictions are too much. The daily reports about Italy certainly feed into the fear of the people who believe that not enough is being done yet. But like I said in one of my previous posts, the way in which numbers are compiled as well as unique regional factors play a big role and should be talked about just as much as the plain numbers that get reported. Actually, methodology and what the numbers really mean should be talked about a lot more.

Growth rates are already on a trajectory of decrease, but not yet in the target area. I say it again, the measures to minimize social contacts are correct, but what I am against is that those measures get an extension; I am not arguing in favor of premature lifting of restrictions before Easter either. The big question on many people's minds is how long those restrictions will be upheld because for most people the situation becomes less bearable with each passing day.

It's a given that the local economy does better without restrictions than with them. Getting isolated by other countries affects only certain branches of the economy (tourism being the biggest by far), but there's a lot of business to be done within each country.