That's ludicrous. If you were right we wouldn't have a stock market by then. We wouldn't even have an economy after 1 year of lock downs, even if they were on and off. There's a point where we just won't be able to isolate and if the virus stays dangerous we will be forced to just take the risk.
Or, we change the kind of economy that we have. We're seeing right now how what parts are actually "essential"; arguably, the rest is only necessary for growth. If growth stops being the goal, the the economy as it was doesn't have to continue.
We're already seeing some rumblings of a stark dichotomy, what with some people advocating for a return to work and acceptance of the risk, contrasting with the backlash that their dollar is not more important than someone's life.
In a Japanese subway, someone wrote: “We can't return to normal, because the normal that we had was precisely the problem.”
It doesn't entirely matter if they're right or wrong objectively; if enough people subscribe to this view, it becomes what we live through.
Sorry, but the economy doesn't just go poof and disappear, I don't know what theory of economics you ascribe to but that's just nonsense. Everything is a trade-off and we'll find ways over time to ease the effects of the lock downs (more masks, more remote work in fields previously thought unviable to remote work in, gradual exceptions made for certain industries critical to public well-being).
I encourage you to play with the epidemic calculator. This isn't something you "just" take the risk for. And keep in mind that the deaths in the calculator aren't including deaths due to denied hospital beds for more typical things like heart attacks and strokes.
Is 10-30 million deaths in the US this year an acceptable trade-off to keep the all-so-important economy going? Or can we scale back the economy and distribute the wealth so that only food can be afforded while we build up hospital resources, work on a vaccine and save lives?
