With regards to risk analysis, its a game of balancing the risk and reward. The convenience of motor vehicles is something we've agreed is worth taking the risk of dying in a car crash, but we wear seat belts and strive for higher safety engineering.
The cost of wearing a seat belt is something close to zero. The cost of closing the economy is far above zero and is costing lives (and livelihoods), and it may not even be effective. The lockdowns were not intended to prevent the majority of coronavirus deaths, they were intended to spread out coronavirus deaths, and to prevent deaths resulting from an overwhelmed healthcare system. The healthcare system is currently vastly underwhelmed.
You brought up an interesting point about the asymptomatic thing. On one hand, we may consider ourselves lucky that Covid doesn't have the 35% mortality rate of MERS. On the other hand, when you catch the flu, you know within a day or two and are then on your couch eating soup until you're feeling better. With Covid, you're running around feeling fine exposing other people who may or may not end up feeling fine. You could go out for a jog and then go chat with Grandma or little Timmy, and then they've croaked. The death statistics are important, but the hospitalization rate is also incredibly important. Assuming medical care is available, its not cheap. The things that put you in the high risk category for Covid aren't just rare lung diseases or being 97 years old. They're things like obesity, asthma, high blood pressure, and diabetes, things that effect more than 50% of Americans. There are essentially four outcomes with Covid, either you are asymptomatic and don't get sick at all, you get a really shitty but not life threatening two week illness, you end up in the hospital with a mountain of medical bills, or you die (and still wrack up medical bills). Three out of four of those are bad options, and option #1 isn't fantastic either for the sake of spread of contagion.
As discussed above, the lockdowns are not intended to prevent everyone from getting the coronavirus, only delay people from getting it. Most people
have had health insurance, but less so today because millions have lost their jobs that typically provide health insurance benefits. In 2018, the
percentage of Americans without health insurance was about 7.75% (assuming a population of 360mm), but this probably went down in 2019/early 2020 due to job and wage gains.
Every decision we will ever make is based on predictions. We predicted and are still predicting the effects of Covid, time will tell how things end up, but its typically better to contain the problem rather than try to deal with it later if its possible to at all.
This depends on the costs. Trying to contain the problem is going to cost lives over the long run.
I'd have to look at a lot of data before making a statement about empty hospitals, that hasn't been my experience, but I'm also looking at the mid Atlantic to northeast corridor, not the country as a whole in depth. We've got fancy statistics here on hospital capacity, death demographics and all sorts of other interesting things if you'd like to take a look.
https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/In Maryland, there are about 1,600 people in the hospital
for with coronavirus. This is out of about
9,400 hospital beds in MD, and is below the surge capacity of the hospitals themselves without state or federal government assistance.
Ah, quick final thought, its a prediction that having covid right now will leave you immune next month.
Recovering from a virus will leave you immune for at least a period of time. As previously discussed, the lockdowns are intended to slow the spread, not stop it. Once between 60-70% or so of the population is immune to a disease(due to vaccination or otherwise), its transmission will stop due to herd immunity. Under a very poor case scenario, if immunity from recovering from the virus lasts less than the time it takes for 60% of the population to get and recover from the virus, the population will never get herd immunity without a vaccine that is not guaranteed to come.
On the topic of vaccines, if the world continues to be on lockdown, there will be intense pressure for drug companies to present their proposed vaccine as safe and effective, and governments will be under great pressure to approve vaccines. This could result in vaccines being approved after some corners are cut, which could result in not good outcomes.
