As disturbing and alarming as all the new cases are to me, and seeing images of people behaving irresponsibly pisses me off, part of me at least feels like, "Good, get it over with, the more of you that act irresponsibly and get infected all at once while I hunker down, the quicker it's all over." Meaning, absent a vaccination or effective treatment, the more people that get infected and develop antibodies, the faster we get to herd immunity and things can get back to some level of normal.
I sort of agree, though would state it differently.
We were all for the initial lock down and are *very* strict about this, not out of fear for our own health, but for the sake of those around us. However, we are now on month 3 of shelter in place. We'll continue following the health rules, but this is not what we collectively agreed to. The idea was always, from the start, to flatten the curve and buy time. Time to learn more about the disease, to prepare the health system, to discover treatments and therapeutics. With the exception of a few hotspots, most of the US was successful in flattening the curve. Yay us!
We now know more about this virus, how it spreads, and we know that it's not as deadly as initially feared. Remember the early 5-8% estimates? Deadlier than influenza and still something to be taken seriously. But not as dire as feared when we knew almost nothing about it.
And we now have proven therapeutics, along with knowledge of simple things like putting the critically ill on their stomach to aid breathing.
And the health system has added ICU beds/ventilators and PPE.
Vaccines are in the works, but unlikely to be ready for some time.
Three months of is equivalent to 6 2-week incubation periods. If shelter in place/quarantine was going to squash this disease then it would have done so by now. It hasn't. So we're in this in-between state, better prepared than in March, but still dealing with community spread.
IMO, I would rather have a long simmering of COVID-19 (that flat curve we talked about 3 months ago), and build up some amount of immunity in the community before everyone heads indoors and the seasonal influenza season starts. This should be a strategy shift. Stress masks in public and keeping physical distance. Spend a lot more protecting those in nursing homes, and helping those who are most vulnerable to continue sheltering in place. But the economy needs to start opening up as much as possible. This is where the risk vs. reward discussion has to happen. And this is where different areas will make different decisions based on what industries drive the local economy. Turns out generating tax revenue is an important component of being able to fund things that are also critical to health and safety.