As far as the anti-lockdown position is concerned, many are pointing to Sweden as having adopted the ideal model...“This is simply wrong,” Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, tweeted in September. “Herd immunity is not a strategy or a solution. It is surrender to a preventable virus.”
As Gabriel Scally, a professor of public health at the University of Bristol, asserted in September, there is simply too much praise being given to the Swedish model.
Adopting herd immunity in much bigger countries such as the US would mean potentially allowing hundreds of millions of people to contract the illness and many of those to die.
...So, what is the best way forward? According to Catherine Hill, a noted French epidemiologist, focusing primarily on the health crisis will ultimately get the economy back on the road to recovery as soon as possible.
“We need to stop thinking that there is an opposition between economy and public health,” Hill told CNN. “If we solve the coronavirus crisis, then we solve the economic crisis. In China, they controlled the epidemic, and the economy returned. The aim is simple: To get rid of the virus, so that life gets back on track.”
And according to Robert J. Barro, co-author of the April 2020 paper “The Coronavirus and the Great Influenza Pandemic: Lessons from the ‘Spanish Flu’ for the Coronavirus’s Potential Effects on Mortality and Economic Activity”, government directives such as social distancing and quarantines were crucial in lowering death rates during the Spanish Flu but that conditions worsened as such restrictions were relaxed. As such, Barro asserted that a similar situation could transpire once more during the current situation “
with a temptation to ease too fast”.
Similarly, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledged that the global recession has been largely driven by people “voluntarily refraining from social interactions as they feared contracting the virus”, and, as such, lifting lockdowns is “unlikely to lead to a decisive and sustained economic
boost if infections are still elevated” as voluntary social distancing will likely persist. “The number one priority is getting control of the virus,” Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at advisory firm Oxford Economics, told CNN. “
And the quickest, [most] aggressive way you can do that is the best thing for the economy.