My main concern is: will we actually learn anything from this experience? We have had a couple of small scale trial runs over the past two decades. We got through those fine, but never considered what would happen if the spread got out of hand.
I'm not going to pretend to be innocent here. It doesn't take an expert in infectious diseases or economics to at least prepare themselves and their family. There are also decisions that we make collectively, though not institutionally, that are dubious. Some people are lucky in that their role in society is important enough that they are valuable in this crisis. Others will more-or-less have their value to society restored as soon as this is over. Then there are the people who's social value depends upon economic prosperity. Those people are going to be hit the hardest.
Then there are the institutional decisions. Some of those are the craziest. Organizations to handle domestic violence, homelessness, mental illness, etc. were scraping by in good times. Transient labor is not an issue in itself, reliance upon it is. While I'm guessing that your reference to transient labor refers to seasonal foreign workers from the context, something similar has been created in local job markets. Many people are working several jobs simply to make ends meet. They cannot provide their own safety net in the case of any crisis (personal, national, or global). In the worse of cases, they are providing a vector for the spread of disease (e.g. hospital and nursing home employees working at several facilities).
On top of all of that, we have the government. I'm not talking about politicians here. They are certainly part of the problem when the don't listen to their own experts, undermine them, or simply get rid of those they don't agree with. I am talking about the civil service. These are the people who provide continuity and should be doing comprehensive planning for different scenarios. (Not to mention ensuring that government services can handle emergencies.) What I have been seeing are a slew of half baked solutions that reflect politician's distorted world view that are, at best, addressed after reality is exposed to them.
My apologies for the rant. Part of the reason for it is that I think the wealthier nations will pull through this, but we could have done a lot better if we went into it prepared.