LogFAQs > #938354850

Services make up 70-75% of US GDP, manufacturing most of the rest, and agriculture about 1%. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States]

A decent amount of the service sector can work from home and make sales online, even if it's less productive. If you look at Europe, where countries have been locked down for 6 weeks, the retail sector is the most negatively affected because people can't go anywhere to buy things, but people can still buy online. Manufacturing and agricultural jobs have still gone to work, and so have a lot of services where the work can't be done remotely, like the postal service or pharmacies.

Lockdown has significantly reduced consumer demand, but people still need to buy things. We will have to manage the debt from the current deficit we're running after the virus, which will be difficult but manageable. The economic hit from this is significant, but it isn't world-ending.

It's manageable to continue lockdown for the next few weeks, even months, and much better to do that than lose hundreds of thousands of lives unnecessarily.