Also no substantial medical facilities on a cruise ship, it aint...

Also no substantial medical facilities on a cruise ship, it aint no hospital!
1% on a cruise-ship I'm betting would translate to half that in a hospital, and then change the demographic to be more representative of society itself (ie; not old people only) it's easily half again.

What I don't understand is why don't we isolate all "high risk" people, ie; over 70 or immune compromised, have supplies delivered to them regularly, give them any support they need, pay all their bills so they aren't disadvantaged in any way and the rest of society gets on with business with a temporary tax of 1-2% or even 10% to pay for anything needed until the virus has gone through the entire healthy population and we have a vaccine?

Surely we've seen now as a society we're certainly willing to bear any cost to protect against a high number of casualties, now we just need to ensure we can do that sensibly, if desperation kicks in this care for the "vulnerable" will be gone as soon as people think it's survival of the fittest, that's the scenario many are about to be pushed into with how we're currently dealing with it.

If you're responsible for a family and there's nothing on supermarket shelves what do you do?
Pretty sure not many here would settle for "thoughts and prayers" or "business stimulus", many people are about to be bankrupted over a virus they wouldn't even notice themselves, they'll lose jobs, houses, struggle to feed their children and even if they had money for food would be fighting at supermarkets to get basic supplies.

We've set a pretty disgraceful example to our children on this one as a society, I'm ashamed to be part of society at this point

Already 2 separate vaccines being tested, one developed in America and one in Australia, this is something that gets done all the time, that's what a world class health system buys us, crushing the worlds economy overnight wont help anyone long-term, or short term for that matter.

Serious questions need to be asked next year when we're looking back on this and reviewing the reaction, if we isolated the vulnerable we would already be looking at vaccinating within weeks, but as we are now the world is starting to prepare for 4-6 months of this at a minimum, why?

When flu season hits (in Australia) society will not be able to bear the additional cost because we went too early IMO, very clear from the outbreak areas temperature plays a part in the spread.

Ps: one other thing, when deciding "non-essential" services can be shutdown you're actually just picking who loses from this, imagine being told you're "non-essential" and being abandoned by society as a whole!