Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a post on politicsnc.com by publisher and founder Thomas Mills.

By Thomas Mills

Conservatives pushing back against the recent orders to stay indoors claim the government had insufficient data to make those calls. They ask for more time to collect data before taking such drastic measures as shutting down our society. Unfortunately, the coronavirus is not giving us that time.

While knowing more about the virus would be helpful in legislating, we know enough now and have enough data to make the decisions Gov. Roy Cooper and other governors have made. Waiting for more information while the virus is spreading rapidly means tolerating more deaths in the interim and, possibly, allowing the pandemic to get out of control. That’s what happened in Italy where the death rate is about 10% of confirmed cases.

Here’s what we do know: The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is new to humans. Nobody has any immunity to the virus so most people are very vulnerable. We also know that it is highly contagious and can be spread through droplets expelled when someone exhales, sneezes or coughs. It’s hard to avoid contact with the infected droplets when people are in close proximity to each other. Hence, the rule to stay 6 feet apart.

We know less about mortality rates, but we know they are very high compared to other viruses. As I said, in Italy, the rate appears to be about 10% or so. In Wuhan, China, the death rate appears to be about 1.4% though some people suggest China is not reporting all of their deaths. Still, 1.4% is a very high rate.

Because the disease is so contagious and because we have no natural immunity to the virus, the coronavirus would likely spread very quickly through society, infecting a large proportion of the population.

To put all of this in context, if 20% of the country is infected, about 64 million people will get the disease. If the mortality rate is 1% then 640,000 would die. This weekend, even President Donald Trump and his team admitted that we’re likely to see 200,000 deaths “if we do everything almost perfectly.” If we do nothing and just allow society to continue as before, we would see about 2 million deaths.

Right now, we’re taking the best action we can take. We need to stop the rapid transmission in the U.S. and give our hospitals and health care system time to prepare. We need more masks, gloves, gowns and ventilators. Conservatives making jokes about a surplus of ventilators after this episode ends should be more concerned about storing and disposing of bodies if we can’t meet the needs of hospitals.

What we need to discuss is what comes next. Are we going to continue with a virtual lockdown of society or are we going to do something else? Until we have a vaccine in a year or so, we will need to figure out how to contain the virus without creating extreme poverty.