It's not that difficult to contain it, if public health services do their job. And it's immensely cheaper for the economy than letting it spread, for the people who are apparently so concerned about stopping the economy for a couple of weeks.
The poster child is S Korea, although their numbers still reached high, because they had one super-spreader. Still they follow the right approach, they have contained it, and they never needed to lock down the country.
https://facebook.com/groups/16572085...54627974766923
China is another example of how to keep it out, now that they have opened back up after bringing it under control. And also of how to contain it when it's out of control, which is the problem most Western European countries have now.
There are even better examples. Vietnam has to date 106 cases, sharing a border and multiple daily air shuttles with China. They monitor the borders, quarantine every case, track where they've been, disinfect affected areas, etc. Just like Korea and now China.
https://vietnamnet.vn/en/society/mar...es-626274.html
Sadly it is Europe who's spreading it worldwide now and has turned it into a pandemic, when it had already been contained at the source.
We can still contain it, but many countries are now in the situation that Hubei was when they locked down, or much worse. So in those countries a full lockdown is needed, because it's too late because it wasn't kept out (governments didn't even want to monitor tourists because it had too much economic impact; now they have much more impact).
With the right measures it can still be stopped, and then we can move to a guarded normality, to wait and see not just if there are advances in vaccines, but what happens in every other country, and help contain it one by one.