My brother lives in SE Asia and has clients in most countries in SE/East Asia (except North Korea.) With many in China. So I've been force-fed a lot of details of this from the front lines.
Anybody who thinks they're working from home for 2 weeks is kidding themselves. Thru April is almost a given, and thru May is very possible if not likely.
Hong Kong and Singapore have largely slowed it to a manageable level -- with all "non-essentials" closed for 6 to 8 weeks. Their "essential" definitions were more stringent than ours have been. They acted faster and more aggressively (less regard for civil liberties) and are far smaller than the US.
Also the people took it seriously. No idiot college students packing bars or flying to Miami for a 2nd spring break because "flights are so cheap.".
No idiots like my 60-yo office neighbor going to Clearwater this week, after Spring Training was canceled, because Florida is warm and sunny.
And their senior citizens could live without church or cards.
"Essential" operations over there are being conducted very differently than we are used to and may be willing to do. Such as scheduling staggered breaks including lunch. Mandatory temperature checks 2x daily and logged. Sending entire teams home for weeks at a time. Etc. Standard union job rules are a recipe for plant shutdown.
@82bordeaux is right -- we're gonna get this good and hard. But we will get out of it and recover. How quickly depends on our societal willingness to make short term sacrifices.
