350, the thing is, Trump, and some republicans have eagerly voiced the idea that the stock market is more important than the lives of the population, and that they'd gladly kill and sacrifice  the working class in order to prop up their suffering stock portfolios.

Well, I still think it is necesary if some self-minded people decide to stage an uprising, or start stealing food and other blongings by using their military grade weaponry. The weapons the police have are inadequate,, and with so many members of police infected, they could be easily overwealmed by an armed cohort.

Good grief, the US is sounding really nuts at the moment.
@Chris, one good friend of mine in London actually hopes that businesses wil realise that no, people do not have to go in to work to work anymore.

I'll say that whilst the figures over here are not good in terms of case load, at the same  time more measures are being put in place.
In terms of the debate, at the moment everything none essential is shut, so pretty much only major food shops remain open, and public gatherings of more than 2 people are directly prohibited, even in terms of shopping, there are enforced distancing measures with people being literaly spread in kews to stay 2 metres away, and people only being allowed out once a day for exercise purposes. The police do directly have powers to administer fines, and jail anyone who causes trouble, so that's definitely a lockdown.

for people on the at risk list and indeed their families, it's recommended to literally not leave the house at all! Indeed, the only time either of us leaves the house is to give our guide dogs an exercise walk, and even that we're doing at crazy times.

On the plus side, there's a lot of volunteering going on at the moment, indeed if the ap is voiceover accessible, I'm looking at signing up with NHS Good sam, to provide after care and companionship to people who can't go in to hospital, so it's not quite all doom and gloom.

355, we know because of the number of background checks processed. While that statistic isn't totally adequate, the number is likely much higher do to the ways to avoid the background check, it should give you a picture. Some states have seen a 400% spike in background check requests compared to the same period last year.
As for the national guard, I don't know what weaponry they have, but I do think military grade weaponry, e.g mortars, surface to surface and surface to air misles, anti-aircraft guns, 40 mm and up to 100 mm automatic rocket launchers, grenade launchers,  20 mm or 50 calibur sniper rifles, chemical agents, tanks, armored personell   cariers, MRAPs, and similar would be needed to combat an uprising.  You would need alot of the weaponry, e.g the mortars to shell baricades if such were constructed, and people were shot at behind them.

Even if they have, it will be months before it gets commercialy produced. So it will be up to individual countries to decide how long social distancing will last because things have calmed down enough to get back to normal or not.

Just stay home and away from people who been out and about.

Seriously @358, I sincerely hope you never get any form of power if your first thoughts of dealing with an uprising is needing snipers, tanks and chemical agents!

Tonight, our country will be going into a sorta marcial law. We'll only be allowed to go to the drug store, hospital, and for some reason, the hardware store. TNTech, WASA, and companies like Nationol Petrolium will still be in operation, because we need gas to fuel our cars, water to wash our hands, electricity to power our homes and hospitals, and it beats me why in the hell we would need to go to the hardware store.
Smaller stores like groceries, little stores like mine and convinience stores will be allowed to open, although only 10 people are allowed to be there at a time. There's a rumour that there won't be any shool until September, but It hasn't been confirmed. We'll have to wait and see.

I think we beat ourselves up too much when we think months ahead into the future, albeit it's a very natural thing for people to do. Remember, this is unprecedented, so we don't know what to expect in the coming days, weeks, or even months. Saying it could last until May or June doesn't really give perspective on a timeline, even though it definitely could be the case.
As far as areas that haven't been affected as dramatically as the US, Italy, Spain, etc, they were far more prepared and quick to respond than practically anywhere else on Earth. Taiwan and South Korea have had the lowest number of cases of infected and deaths resulting from COVID19, but their maneuvers earlier on is what prevented them from being so harshly impacted like the US. After the SARS outbreak of 2003, Taiwan in particular set out to brace itself for the next pandemic. It arrived late last year, and if I'm not mistaken, the number of overall cases was less than 75 with only 1 death.
Read into how South Korea handled the outbreak. It's pretty fascinating what they've done with thermal imaging and how they were successfully able to provide tests.
Suffice it to say that our complacent attitudes left us highly vulnerable to not only spreading the virus so rapidly, but also having to adjust to a new way of life while taking huge blows to the economy and other infrastructures. Note too, that the countries who handled this predominantly well are much smaller than places like the US. Taiwan has a population of 23 million, while we sit at well over 300 million. You constantly hear on the news that the US has overtaken China in most number of cases, which is pretty common sense when you figure in that we're the third largest country in the world. More people, more contact, more spread.

Hardware stores might stay open because if something goes wrong in the house - a pipe bursts, you need to fix a window, etc. - then a hardware store is probably a good place to go if you think you can fix it on your own.

@368, not quite unprecedented. The Spanish Flu of 1918 was the worst pandemic of the 20th century, and that was far worse than this. As for Taiwan, all fair points, although according to my relatives over there, they weren't all that far ahead of everyone else in preparation. And if SARS taughtpeople to be careful, China should've seen this coming. Taiwan wasn't majorly impacted by that particular outbreak if memory serves.

Am I complacent? No. I do take this seriously, I simply also don't believe in mass histeria which is, unfortunately,what most of the information comes from. You made fair points, and I've done nothing but read for the past week and a half as I haven't had anywhere to go.As for precedents not being relevant simply because we weren't alive at that time? I'm sorry, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Precedents in history are relevant even if indirectly. Do I follow what all the health experts are saying? Yes and no. Because much of the information comes from those simple numbers you mentioned. But no disrespect meant either, I'm perfectly happy to accept information I didn't have... broadens my perspective. But numbers can't be ignored. I also guarantee thatif this had happened 10 years ago when social media was less prominent than it is now, there wouldn't be nearly as much panic as there is now.