Because if everyone isolated for a month it wouldn't spread and die-out. Having a deadly flu in the public causing mass deaths and difficult recovery for the young would bring the worst economic impact out of both scenerios.

You mean 2.2 million right ? I mean the reason why is that most humans have compassion and don't want their parents and grandparents to die. I think that having empathy and wanting to prevent death of other humans is an admirable trait or our species.

> Why do people think that waiting 2 weeks or 2 months will solve it?

Who said it will solve it? It will flatten the curve as it already has in other countries, hopefully avoiding a catastrophic overload of the healthcare system.

The Imperial paper said that 2 months doesn't really flatten the curve enough to kill it off, given where we already are. You're just moving that peak to a later date, but it will still vastly exceed the healthcare capacity (we can't upscale it 8x in that amount of time).

Hence their conclusion is that we'll have to basically do this on and off, flattening the curve just enough that we can let it rebound for a while without overwhelming the system, until vaccine is available. Which they estimate as 18 months, out of which 12 will be on lockdown - however you space it out.

So yeah, the economic impact will be massive. But it doesn't have to translate to people dying, if we focus on preventing that. One person could feed themselves and others with the fruits of their labor since the agricultural revolution. It's a question of distribution, not of availability.