Given how quickly the virus can infect people and put them in the hospital if unchecked by masking/social distancing/etc. and vaccines, just letting everyone get infected would rapidly overwhelm our health care system and cause a lot of deaths that could have been prevented.

If the world had collectively done nothing about COVID over the past two years, sure, the pandemic might be "over" by now, but the total death toll would likely be much higher than what we'll probably end up with when all this is actually over, given our current path.

I'm not thrilled with how the past two years have gone, but it could have been much, much worse. It could also have been much better, if it weren't for people using the virus to score political points.

Even with a mix of vaccines and natural immunity, I don't think we can rely on natural immunity to solve this. That just doesn't pass the smell test.