Haimy – yes, a virus does leave people after a certain point. Will it leave the earth, assumedly no. But how hard is it to understand that if 1000 (randomly chosen number) people leave their houses after they have all recovered and are no longer positive, it is different from 1000 people leaving their houses while a whole bunch of them are STILL CARRIERS. See the key here is that if you aren’t carrying the virus anymore, you won’t give it to someone. And if you have only been exposed to people in your house, then there should, technically, be a finite amount of time before the virus has run its course through EVERYONE, leaving some untouched perhaps, but the active virus eventually leaves. If we wait til it leaves MOST people, instead of waiting til we are restless and bored, then when people leave their houses there won’t be anything to spread.
One problem with this is the emotional damage to people being “locked up” for so long, or suffering financial damage (remember the great depression suicide rates?) since the above scenario would probably take a very long time.
But either way, people shouldn’t be making their decisions based on their inability to put the human population ahead of their own self interest, or their extreme boredom, or politics, or anything else not medically determined as a good idea.