It's weird that "I'm personally willing to accept a 1-2% risk of death to reopen the country" is such a common talking point. If somehow the only cost of reopening the country were a 1-2% risk of me personally dying, I'd be in favor of it too, obviously.
I am personally unwilling to accept a million people dying to reopen the country. The thing that happens if we go back to uncontrolled exponential spread is a 1-2% chance of you dying (depending on demographics) AND a guarantee of ~ a million people dying.
Also, of course, we can't 'reopen the country' because people do not want to die and so they will not resume ordinary economic activities on large scales until they're reassured those activities are safe, etc etc etc.
Masks, switching all possible gatherings to outdoors, test+trace +a recordsetting race for treatments+ vaccines is the only way to make society safe enough that it makes sense to resume economic activity.
