The cost of these field hospitals is negligible and I am not upset about them. But I am upset that the healthcare system seems to have been nowhere near capacity. Which means we are paying the full cost of the lockdown while not getting the full return in term of herd immunity, which we will pay later on with more lockdowns probably starting in fall. In other words we overreacted and flattened the curve too much.
For the first go-around, with minimal available data, that seems like the much better way to err - it would've been very, very difficult to fix a mistake in the other direction. We've got more data now, and can do a better job of toeing the line with upcoming waves.
It's not like we can't unflatten the curve if we really want to.
That is a reasonable objection. But now that we have this data, there doesn't seem to be any appetite to bump up the curve, i.e. it's not about flattening the curve anymore, it is targetting zero infection until an hypothetical vaccine. Very different objective, no debate about it. And no herd immunity.
There's plenty of appetite for opening back up, which'll almost certainly bump up the curve. No one's saying outright "let's have more infections!", but it'll be the end result of the reopening policies.
I am not sure that it is the policy. In the US or Europe, all governments have warned that they would back down from opening up if they see a rise in new cases.
Sure, they're going to have to ride the rollercoaster up and down for a while. I suspect we'll absolutely see further lockdowns; the question is going to be how long we can go before declaring one.
More data is good for determining how far we can let things grow before locking down, but it's confounded a bit by social factors like people getting tired of the bumpy ride and not following them as well after a while.
