In order to beat this thing back, we need to use the tools our ancestors did - quarantine and isolation - and complement them with modern strategies. In the US, we still have approximately 40k additional infections a day, and we're drowning in a sea of comorbidities.
Re-opening to let however many people die so we can get back to normal isn't a strategy, it's giving up.
More about the modern strategy that we could have used instead: https://youtu.be/VK0Wtjh3HVA
E.g. the drastic differences in infection rates and mortality in different countries in Europe with nominally similar strategies gives us an indication that there is a lot more to learn.
Additionally, we don't know the long term consequences of this thing yet - it's possible that it's going to cause chronic issues a lot of people who would've otherwise been healthy.
> Additionally, we don't know the long term consequences of this thing yet - it's possible that it's going to cause chronic issues a lot of people who would've otherwise been healthy.
That is a risk I understand and am completely willing to take. Instead, a bunch of people with medical degrees have banned me from making this choice, hiding behind “informed consent” doublespeak (and pernicious nonsense in this case - nobody is informed, the risks from an unprecedented year-long lockdown are unknown too, and those are simply the stakes) while taking a giant dump all over the Hippocratic Oath. The reckoning can’t come soon enough.
Here in Florida when cases spiked, patients were having to be sedated with drugs not originally meant for sedation, due to etomidate, ketamine, and propofol supplies running out. There was no PPE, everyone was reusing masks and gowns. Doctors got sick, some died. Everyone was working 60+ hours and I know many hospitals were offering $100+/hr with multi thousand dollar bonuses per week to get staff to come in. Staff still turned down these offers, due to the stress.
Advent Health setup a dedicated hospital for COVID in every major city to try and efficiently use PPE, they were quickly overwhelmed and the covid patient's flooded every hospital, resulting in even less PPE availability.
One ICU nurse I know summed it up best "We went from working 2-3 patients that each had one problem, to work 5-8 patients, each one with a myriad of problems. I want to go back to the simple patients, I have to code patients several times a week now."
Sure maybe if our government was effective we could have come up with a better plan, but implementing a "segregation" of elderly from the general population simply wasn't going to happen. The efforts to "lower the curve" were 100% necessary and didn't go far enough or last long enough. Now we get the worst of everything, mass death, continuing outbreak and a damaged economy.
Also: These weren't small podunk hospitals, these were the Advent Health's, Baptist Health, Cleveland Clinic size health systems, it's not a lack of money or trying that this all went down, it was a real crisis.