It is like you place less value on a life of someone who is 60, 70, and less value on the life of someone who may have an underlying condition. A lot of people don't know if they have an underlying condition. The percentage of Americans with one or more underlying conditions is high. You have heart disease, asthma, diabtetes, lots of different things. These people prop up your frontline. The average age of a health care worker to die of Covid is 56. These people have worth. A lot of these people work in healthcare.
There will come a point when doctors, nurses, lab workers, porters, care workers will have had enough. Look up their stories.
Society is often judged by how it treats its most vulnerable.
They cannot be shut away - the world does not work like that. It is not possible. It is possible in a small percentage of cases, people who are able to live independently, order online, and not have physical contact. For everyone else, it is not possible. And even if it was, for what?
You do know that if we had managed to shut the world down for two weeks, this thing would have gone? And countries have managed to slam down, then they re-open, and with less damage to their economy than dragging it out for months on end?
Also look at the evidence about long term problems - 1 in 5 Covid patients ending up with a psychiatric diagnosis. It harms lungs, nervous systems, hearts, brains. As runners, surely people should be conscious of this?
I am scared for your country, as I am for others. I believe you will see the peak in December, and it will be horrendous. Read the stories of people who have lost almost all of their family, you can look them up. In the UK, a man losing his wife and both sons. In El Paso, a woman losing six members of her family. Is it really worth this... to just not wear a mask, to not social distance until the vaccine is here? Herd immunity can only be accomplished successfully in the majority of cases by vaccination - that's one thing history has taught us.
Look to countries who have done well.
I would urge everyone to read this article in the Lancet:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30800-8/fulltext
Especially the part at the bottom.
You may feel you can exist as an island - but what services do you access on a yearly basis? Delivery drivers? Health services? People at risk? The health services are utterly overwhelmed right now, they are on the verge of not being able to cope in a number of countries. When people are triaged and turned away for help with a broken leg because it is not 'essential', maybe then things will change. But I don't hold out much hope. All for your 'freedom'. When you are able to go outside whenever. It's not freedom you are complaining about. It's luxuries. Because the countries that slammed down hard are now the ones that will have the least economic damage long term.
You can restart a business but you cannot dig someone up from the grave and bring them back to life.