...why don't we just do this all the time? I mean after all, we lose over 50k people yearly to the flu and over 17 million worldwide to infectious diseases. Clearly social distancing works. If we could cut those numbers in half, wouldn't that be a great way to go?
And if your answer is it's because we don't have a vaccine, then let's say one gets developed and we lose 150k-200k yearly to the corona virus with the vaccine. You good with that?
The authorities have repeatedly pointed to the possibility of hospitals being overwhelmed beyond their capacity with COVID-19 cases alone if economic shutdowns & social distancing measures were not being practiced. That would mean all those many thousands needing emergency care for life saving procedures would die. It would also mean that those needing immediate care to avert negative consequences like being put in comas, paralysis etc, would not be saved.
Without the shutdown & safety measures via social distancing, many hospitals would be overwhelmed while not having the staff or equipment to properly deal with it, leading to many more health care workers getting ill. That, in turn, would lead to cascading issues within the health care system as mentioned above.
The situation could get so bad that it could lead to mass panic, rioting, looting, anarchy. The government would rather avert potential doomsday scenarios.
Moreover relatively little is known about this virus compared to the flu which has been studied for decades & which has not caused hospitals to be overwhelmed as potentially they would have been via COVID-19. So better to shut things down for a few weeks or months until more is learned this novel virus. IOW better safe than sorry.
Also, relative to the flu, experts tend to think, based on the data they have thus far, that COVID-19 is much more easily transmitted & has a higher death rate. So it is considered a much more dangerous threat than the flu. Consequently, much greater measures to shut it down have been implemented.
Does that make sense to you?