Is it really? I've heard there's some logic to this…

If instead, we all stay home and quarantine, the second we start reducing the quarantine the virus flares back up again. If instead, we start acquiring immunity in low-risk populations, at a rate that the hospitals can sustain, we'll have a degree of herd immunity and a portion of the population that can no longer spread it.

I'm certainly not an epidemiologist though; anyone smarter than me that can way in on that thinking?

> If instead, we start acquiring immunity in low-risk populations, at a rate that the hospitals can sustain, we'll have a degree of herd immunity and a portion of the population that can no longer spread it.

A fair portion of low-risk people will require intervention. Given that a lot more people are low than high risk, you're still overwhelming the health system, and all those low-risk people are still going to interact with others while they are asymptomatic but transmissible.

Delaying the pandemic buys time. Time is the most critically short resource.

Time means more ICUs, more ventilators. It means industrial capacity can shift from making consumer goods to medical supplies like masks. It means medical personnel get training and experience with the disease instead of shooting in the dark. It means labs and research teams can give more informed treatment advice.

It means small businesses and industries can try to reallocate resources and jobs and maybe save part of the economy. It means more time to educate the population to avoid high risk activities, wear masks, wash hands and so forth.

In every way it’s better if we delay the pandemic now that we know about it than if we just let it peak exponentially and kill the maximum number of people.

Studies show it wouldn't work if _everyone_ thought like that at the same time. But studies also show that you need to "pulse" the infection rate among low-risk populations in order to get past this in a controllable fashion by temporarily and partially lifting the restrictions on those people and letting them acquire immunity, while carefully isolating and supporting the high risk populations. The fundamental truth of the situation is: 60-70% will have to go through the wringer before this is over. "When", "which subset", and "how" will determine the fatality rate. One thing is absolutely clear: we _must_ completely isolate (and support) the elderly and those with severe pre-existing conditions. Large numbers of immune people could help with that. Complete shutdown of the economy (if such a thing were even possible) would condemn a lot of the vulnerable people to die, since they still need food and a lot of them also need medical care, which could become unavailable, like in Italy.

And if that wants to get organized I can see how that would work. "Get sick to beat the rush", however, is not that - it's an action where the only good outcome would be if only you do it, which I think is a definition of selfishness.

Thats fine, but as things are right now, we're short on beds in a few places, and are wasting beds everywhere else. Seems like a waste of the precious resources to me.

You do realize that any decision made today will reap benefits in more than a week, right? Those beds may no longer be wasted by the time you're ready to take advantage of them.