Let's look at British Columbia, Canada where we have managed to stabilize at ~10 cases a day. How long before we get the same number of deaths with our population of 5 million people. Hmm, 5 million divided by 10 divided by 365 is 1369 years. Even if we consider 10 cases for every one detected case that's ~137 years! Longer than a human life span. Ignoring things like improved treatment options, vaccines, and other things that are going to change in our understanding.
So I think this proves the argument wrong.
If you consider the other costs you're avoiding, long term issues for sick people, the cost of treating all these people in hospital, the potential for people to get sick with this multiple times (we don't know if you get any immunity by getting sick) then it's even clearer.
They have only stabilized at that level if you are willing to permanently keep things the way they are. Are you comfortable with the restrictions currently in place being permanent?
I think we can keep things where they are. The current restrictions aren't great but they are sustainable:
- Virtually no travel in and out of the country (goods still flow though).
- No gatherings > 50 people.
- Keep 2m away from others (except for "bubbles").
- Wash your hands.
- Masks in certain situations (not mandatory for most).
- Various limitations in place as to how businesses operate, e.g. distance between tables in restaurants, physical barriers, cleaning, one way aisles in stores etc etc.
Since I'm not the type or age who goes partying out in crowded bars or to packed concerts that stuff doesn't really bother me personally. Sure, it's no fun, but the alternative seems like a lot less fun. In my (global) company we all switched to wfh when this started and I'm fine with that.
Wow. All I can say is that you have very different priorities than most others. Most are ok with those changes temporarily. Almost nobody is willing to make that sacrifice permanently.
Permanently != until there's a vaccine or effective treatment.
There's lot of room for optimization/improvements. Travel might be ok to locations that have this under control, for example. We might find better solutions for keeping the transmission low. We could decide to clamp down harder and eradicate the virus locally so that we can trade off local restrictions vs. travel restrictions.
It's just between all the bad options here this seems to be the least bad. 2 years of the disease raging through the community until (maybe) there's herd immunity sounds so much worse. I'm pretty sure the Americans who think this is the way to go will change their minds come this fall assuming the current trend continues. Maybe I'm wrong... Let's catch up in December ;)
So I think this proves the argument wrong.
If you consider the other costs you're avoiding, long term issues for sick people, the cost of treating all these people in hospital, the potential for people to get sick with this multiple times (we don't know if you get any immunity by getting sick) then it's even clearer.