Totally agreed. I hate to repeat a phrase that's essentially a right wing / denialist talking point, but, at a certain point, the cure is definitely worse than the disease. You can see this pretty obviously if you imagine shutting down literally everything, so that GDP drops 100%. Clearly, people will die in that scenario.
So, the question really is: at what point is the cure worse than the disease? To answer that, you have to look at the impact of people at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, not professionals who are WFH and largely insulated from it.
This is asking for a lot, but maybe this crisis will help Americans re-evaluate why we think it's such a good idea to set up society without a safety net, such that temporarily shutting down the economy for a few months is such a disaster. Can we make structural/political changes that reduce the impact of such shutdowns? I know this is expecting way too much outside-the-ideological-box thinking from politicians, but maybe this kind of thought will inch toward the mainstream.
That is probably asking a lot, but maybe we might get at the very least a re-evaluation of how we look at sick time for food and service industry workers. It's not just a job benefit, subject only to negotiation between employer and employee. It ought to be a public interest question, affecting lots of people other than employer and employee, so it ought to be handled more like social security or unemployment insurance. Even that is a stretch, but I could see it potentially happening.
So, the question really is: at what point is the cure worse than the disease? To answer that, you have to look at the impact of people at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, not professionals who are WFH and largely insulated from it.