The young, healthy working aged adults are the "front line" against many dangerous viruses and bacteria. What happens when you remove the natural herd immunity? (Wasn't it something like 40-45% of the US was already naturally immune against COVID when the lockdowns first started happening?)
My guess is if we switch to pure defense, when the next big novel virus comes along, it will wipe out a whole lot more of us.
Your worry here seems to be hypothetical and not based on any reasonable epidemiological theory.
> Are common colds and other things much worse there? I don't think so.
I would love to investigate this further, considering the latest 3 deadly strains of H1N1, and SARS have come from here. But given that we don't have any reliable data (data we can trust), it's hard to tell what actually is going on there. We are only told what we want to be told by an authoritarian regime.
(But agree that knee-jerk mandatory restrictions would be a terrible outcome.)