[oceanofsolaris]

I think there are still some unknowns (number of infections without any symptoms, etc.), but so far, this approach doesn't seem viable: If we keep infections low enough that the health care system can deal with the severe cases, it will take us more than two years to develop herd immunity. By that time, we will (hopefully) have a vaccine anyways.

So the better strategy might be to not drive the health system to its brink (also not clear how well it could sustain that strain for long anyways) and instead keep infection numbers very low until we have a vaccine (while opening society and the economy as much as possible).

In each case, we need to keep R0 more or less exactly at 1.0 . If it is any bigger, we have exponential spread which will quickly overwhelm the health care system. If it is much smaller, we have gone overboard with containment measures and should relax them to ease the burden for society. The only difference is how much strain is put on the health care system (which is usually already operating close enough to capacity without a pandemic).