@Millhouse – I prefer to stay out of the discussions here as they go on and one aimlessly. At the risk of getting involved, I want to point out your comment about developing immunity is ignoring several considerations. Not going to debate these all but understand the experts trying to figure out how to reopen and move on from this have to contend with these issues and possibly others that I am not thinking of at the moment:
1. Evidence from places like South Korea suggests that if properly managed (i.e. once we are out of the community spread stage and have a handle on testing and how has it) is that we can possibly avoid many people getting it, or at least getting it in the near term.
2. There are many unknowns about people getting this, such as with children, some recent data suggests it is causing some issues there that might best be avoided. From a medical standpoint I believe it is generally considered reckless to suggest exposing people to a disease that is not well understood. Besides children, no one knows the long-term impact to adults who have gotten this.
3. While it makes sense that those who get this should be immune, this is not clearly understood with this virus yet. Even if immune are you immune to mutated strains, which free-run will result in many?
4. Spread of this risks mutation into deadlier forms. Any basic understanding of the history of the 1918 flu pandemic would illustrate this risk (it should be mandatory that you read the history of the 1918 flu pandemic before you offer any suggestions regarding this pandemic).
5. If we are vigilant there still will likely be some spread and eventually the strain that escapes detection will be one that is of minimal concern. That would be a preferred method of how we can get to herd immunity with minimal consequence.
6. Alternatively to #5, if we can slow the spread of this disease for a year or so, there is a chance that a vaccine will be available.
There are many questions here and there are those trying to figure out how to balance the medical concerns with the daily life concerns and it is a difficult balance. A mistake can mean disaster. We already saw the consequence of ignoring the risk when we still had a chance to mitigate this, let’s consider if we can find a path that while it does make life a bit difficult for the near future it reduces the chance of a full-scale disaster.
One final point, there are many that assume the anti-body studies mean much. While they may offer some promising info, jumping to conclusions and acting too soon risks undoing all that we worked towards. An extra few weeks to give up is perhaps better than losing a few more months.