It is true that if you multiply the age-specific IFR by the age-specific US population then you get a number which is ~2 million. That assumes infecting 100% of the US population, which is impossible. A naive worst case scenario is more like 1 million US deaths.
If you could protect just everyone who is 80 years and older (that's 4% of the total population) then that naive 1 million number falls by about half to 500k.
If you could somehow reach herd immunity by only exposing the least vulnerable of the overall population, you would get there with less than 30,000 deaths.
Even those numbers are assuming there is zero latent immunity, which we now know is not true.
The argument is not to "stand by". The argument is we need to be much smarter, because the interventions are not free, in dollars or in lives (US Federal deficit is looking to hit $4 trillion this year, versus 2019's $1 trillion) and the interventions are also not effective as we've already seen over 200,000 deaths.
If you could protect just everyone who is 80 years and older (that's 4% of the total population) then that naive 1 million number falls by about half to 500k.
If you could somehow reach herd immunity by only exposing the least vulnerable of the overall population, you would get there with less than 30,000 deaths.
Even those numbers are assuming there is zero latent immunity, which we now know is not true.
The argument is not to "stand by". The argument is we need to be much smarter, because the interventions are not free, in dollars or in lives (US Federal deficit is looking to hit $4 trillion this year, versus 2019's $1 trillion) and the interventions are also not effective as we've already seen over 200,000 deaths.