Call me a renegade, but I think the only goal should be to minimize the total number of deaths from Covid. Trying to maximize sustainable medical system occupancy is almost certainly not aligned with the former goal.
No perfect solutions there. If there was perfect quarantine, we would still lose additional lives from suicide, domestic violence, etc. from the increased stress. There is definitely a balance to be struck, and making sure we have capacity to treat all of the sick seems to be as good as any.
Yeah, making sure we have capacity to treat anyone sick is certainly one of the highest priorities (and the reason there was such a scramble trying to contain the virus from wreaking havoc if we went past that). And I get that there are other "costs" to the virus and lockdown and a holistic, balanced view is useful. Heck, I have two young children who have been remote schooling for almost a year now while both parents work full-time.
I just object with the parent's following statement:
> With the vaccines now available, it seems like our goal should still be be to maintain the highest level of sustainable medical system occupancy.
If we are still trying to maintain the highest level of sustainable medical system occupancy while the percentage of population that has been vaccinated is slowly increasing, it would actually mean we are doing a horrible job in trying to limit preventable deaths when a fully vaccinated populace + herd immunity is not too far away. Maybe when a much larger percentage of the population is vaccinated, the spread and rate of deaths will be low enough that this may change, but we are still nowhere near that stage.
