Exactly - hence my suggestion of Pest Houses and specialized clinics. There is a possibility that there will never be a vaccine. So set up a plan where access to a clinic is granted to those who completely check out of society, and those who can afford it. Everyone else goes to a mass-production treatment facility. If healthcare workers don't want anything to do with this, they don't have to work in that branch of medicine. Problem of hospital overload solved.
I know it's a broken record, but the idea that can "distance" ourselves out of this is insane. The world needs to continue.
My Covid Warrior friends are all cheering the fact that I have become a Mask Evangelist. My sermon is "You don't have to fear the virus, but you do have to fear a healthcare industry that is targeting our way of life in order to protect their Elective Surgery gravy train. Don't give them the optics they need - wear a mask and don't act like an idiot."
What you just proposed is a radical form of distancing, similar to China's or North Korea's. It's still using distancing.
Good luck selling that to the US. Or the UK.
"That branch of medicine" would be like the leper houses of the past. You might want to look into it. And the "checked out" people number about 40% of the population right now - who will support that?
Anyway, by allowing people who are CV+ to have their own clinics (once they are diagnosed) wouldn't keep CoVid out of the sheltered population unless those people literally are shut in. And the hospitals who were treating "healthy people" would continue to have outbreaks of CoVid (since it's transmissible before symptoms occur). They would then have to be sent to special ICU-capable hospitals (where?)
55% of people who test positive for CV will need hospitalization. Hospital stays for CoVId are among the lengthiest observed for any illness. People get out of the hospital with $1M in medical debt.
4 in 1000 40-somethings who get covid will die. If this sounds l0w to you, then you really should not be too worried about things like drunk drivers or speeders or wearing seatbelts, either. Heck, 1 in 100,000 40-somethings will die of flu - so why in heck do we even bother with flu shots?
Fortunately, only 2 in 1000 (1 in 500) thirty-somethings will die in this next phase. Older people will obviously lock themselves away if at all possible, so rates of death will fall. But it saddens me that we worry about deaths that are 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 in other circumstances.
For kids, it will be even lower - perhaps 1 in 10,000 or even 1 in 25,000. But as that happens, where are you intending to send the parents (who need quarantining). Or do they get to just go on with business as usual, infecting others?
You are right that if we allow this to rip through our nation unobstructed (while giving people like me a special hospital to go to - although I know that when the pandemic gets larger, that will quickly fall by the wayside)...we will have way more deaths, but we will get to something like herd immunity and eventually near zero cases. In about 12-18 months, if we really make no effort to protect anyone. Healthcare workers will still die, as the viral load will be enormous and no amount of PPE is perfectly protective - and there won't be spacesuits for everyone.
Overall mortality in the US is predicted to be about 1M given current SoC. The main anti-viral in use is about to run out. There are some newer palliative treatments, otherwise the mortality would probably be 1.3 million. If the very elderly (over 80) are completely out of the mix, it might be only 800,000. And you're saying "no biggie," let's make sure we have enough gadgets and entertainment experiences.
To me, as long as we have food and essential services, we can ride this out in a more humane way (but we're not going to - so you are very likely to get your wishes, except of course there will be no "CoVid-only" clinics as the people have to go somewhere else to get tested and the genie is therefore already flitting outside the bottle.
