I understand your reluctance to shut everything down for a disease that doesn't kill everyone who gets it. But, for one, the shutdown was never supposed to be forever. Countries who shut down early, before the disease spread so far, were able to suppress the outbreak. They engaged in mass testing and contact tracing, and now they are beginning to open slowly and safely. We didn't do any of those things.

The other factor to consider is that only the US had to "shut our economy down." Other countries supported their citizens while in quarantine, so the economy was able to be kept on life support, so to speak. Only here, where our government doesn't work for the people but for the corporations, are we faced with this brutal binary choice of go to work and risk getting infected, or don't go to work and end up homeless.