You're looking at this from privileged perspective of Bay Area software engineer, who can work from home, or even take few months break from work altoghether.

You're looking at this from privileged perspective of Bay Area software engineer, who can work from home, or even take few months break from work altoghether. "Economy taking a hit" is just an euphemism for real tragedies, like people losing their jobs, their homes, not being able to pay for healthcare, etc. I read that there was a spike in suicides since the beginning of the lockdowns for those very reasons. So now you can weight number of lives saved from COVID vs number of lives destroyed by lockdows, and only then you'll know if they were worth it.