The “lockdown” is a Fabian strategy; one of the goals is to preserve our ability to stage an economic comeback after the health crisis has been resolved. In the

The “lockdown” is a Fabian strategy; one of the goals is to preserve our ability to stage an economic comeback after the health crisis has been resolved. In the near term, the economy is toast no matter what we do (short of a well oiled contact tracing and isolating machine). This paper seems to suggest there isn’t really a tension between protecting people’s health and saving the economy: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560 You are correct that the lockdown measures are a choice and not a natural consequence of the virus though.