[zelon88]

Define what you mean by "screw the pooch."

Currently COVID-19 response is a finely tuned balance of economic impact to death-toll. React too early and you'll experience an unacceptable economic impact. React too late and you'll experience an unacceptable death-toll.

The reason this situation is so dire is not because of the lethality of the virus. It is because our medical infrastructure is not capable of treating patients in the capacity that this virus can infect them. The goal is not to prevent people from contracting COVID-19. The goal is to slow the spread of COVID-19 so that the number of cases which require hospitalization stays lower than the availability of hospital beds.

If everyone got sick all at once the fatality rate would increase because people would be dying faster than they could be treated. So long as we can treat our ill faster than people become ill we can manage this situation even if 100% of humans eventually become infected. The balancing act comes into play when you also need to consider the impact to the economy.

There is a saturation point that early responding countries will reach where even if they continue to increase their response they will only be increasing their economic impact without significantly decreasing the death-toll. Finding this balance is what governments are trying to do right now.