If we just let it rip through our population like we did in the past, we would had developed herd immunity 6 months ago.
The problem with that approach is that 80-90% of the population needs to get the virus for herd immunity to kick in. Let's say 85% of America gets the virus; that's 280,500,000 people. Let's also say that only 1% of those people need ICU beds; that's 2,805,000 folks who need an ICU bed just because of COVID (not counting heart attacks or other conditions requiring ICU). There are only 85,247 ICU beds in the nation. While not all of those 2,805,000 people will need an ICU bed at the exact same moment, odds are still good hospitals will be overwhelmed and many non-COVID patients will fail to get essential care on time, to say nothing of the COVID patients who won't make it despite the hospital's best efforts.
Why should we run out and get COVID when we can still get herd immunity without the risks, either to the individual patient or to the health care system, with the new vaccine?
A much smarter approach would have been to restrict old people with comorbidities, and let the younger healthy folks not be shut down. Mortality rate for the latter group is very low, not enough to overwhelm ICU’s inhospitals.
Instead the gov’t in many states enforced shutting off all people regardless of health or age, and killed millions of small businesses.
If a health nut like me can visit stores 75 times and gym 200 days, and sit down restaurants 50 times (Florida restaurants are open) at age 80 and not even suffer a sniffle, the shutdowns were purely political. I stay healthy with gym visit 6 out of 7 days every week. My lungs are in great shape.