Rather than having at-risk people self-quarantine for a month, with government financial assistance of course, while the rest of us build up antibody resistance, we collectively lost our shit and decided all people needed to self-quarantine for months -- just delaying the inevitable.
It's actually quite easy to self-quarantine everyone over 70, since they're receiving government assistance anyway (Social Security). But now there are already thousands of job losses from young, healthy, productive people that have almost zero chance of dying from this disease.
The UK will be mostly done with Covid-19 in two months, with much less dire economic consequences -- and the US will still be playing whack a mole and killing the economy with healthy 25 year-olds holed up in their apartment.