https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
If everyone under 50 caught it, we'd have had way more than 30,000 deaths at this point because we've already had at least 30,000 deaths.
You also assume that Covid doesn't have serious long term complications arising from infections that are still being discovered. So you're basically suggesting that we yolo it during a pandemic and ignore the consequences of such.
Contrary to your myopic understanding of the topic... total exposure during a pandemic is actually not the way to manage it. 'the rest of society would be well protected' but instead we likely would have had a total collapse if everyone were to be infected at the same time by allowing the 'virus to 'run its course'.
Once the infection rate hits a threshhold, the entire 20% die.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
The hospitalization and fatality rates are far lower now for vaccinated people.
2% is getting up there. Even if 75% avoid that fate by getting vaccinated, incapacitating 2% of the remainder will be enough to send us into a deep recession.
Hospital beds aren't unlimited.
ICU beds full? Someone has a heart attack? Well, sucks to be them.
That's the part of covid everyone is ignoring: it creates an additional burden on the health care system, hospitals that normally are booked solid for surgeries can no longer handle those cases due to the emergency influx from a pandemic spreading like wildfire.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/nhcs/intubation-ventilator-...
Beds can be added on a temporary basis. Availability of trained healthcare providers is the more relevant limit.
The way to decrease the number of variants that emerge over the course of a disease is by decreasing the total number of people infected over the full course of the disease. That requires widespread vaccination.
Personally, I value the lives of people over 50 just as much as those under 50. A lot of important people to me and to everyone is over 50.
Any non-sociopathic loss function would deem the half million people in the US that we've lost completely unacceptable.
And with even greater spread, there's greater likelihood of the rise of a variant that kills those under 50 just as much.
The only people proposing we should have let it run wild and also actually understand the consequences are absolute monsters that should be shunned and never given any authority or decision making power.
Also the first SARS was far less transmissible. Generally speaking as viruses mutate, they tradeoff R0 and severity. It is unlikely the first SARS would have evolved a variant that was more transmissible and equally fatal.
EDIT: Note that even though increased transmissions can mean more mutations leading to dangerous variants anyways, if the alpha variant were spreading broadly before something like delta was broadly spreading, then the delta variant would contend with a higher natural immunity in the global population, which would make it difficult for delta to take hold in the same way. The CDC’s own presentations show that even a limited increased natural immunity of 35% would mean that delta cases would reduce without new masking mandates or restrictions.