Not really sure what all of this "let's have a conversation" is supposed to mean. We're a republic because we're larger than a village and thus have too many people to make direct democracy work. So, we elect a bunch of people who are supposed to figure out what to do in situations like this. They're supposed to have personnel and protocols in place to weigh the costs and benefits of various alternatives and determine the best course of action. But nearly every place Republicans are in charge, they've largely decided to wing it. To the extent they really care about anything, they've been motivated by helping businesses, but they don't even really want to think through what would help businesses. It's just too much work for them and apparently thinking hurts their brains, so they just decided to go with a shitload of wishful thinking.
The answer to the problem wasn't going to be easy, but it was always simple: Lock down for a time, use that time to surge hospital capacity, the production of necessary supplies and equipment, and test and trace capabilities, and develop effective logistics to ensure that everything gets delivered to those who need it. While locked down, the government could backstop everything: suspend mortgages and rent, guarantee payroll, etc. A real testing and tracing system would give people confidence that, when things re-opened, the risk of going back out in the world would be minimal and more federal aid at that point would've been unnecessary.
Of course, that all would have required competent messaging from our officials explaining why we need to lock down and what that time will give us the opportunity to do, and real diligence from government officials at all levels to make sure all that shit got done. However, Republican officials in most states are simply incapable of doing anything with competence and the ones that are capable of competence recognize that actually doing their job competently would put the lie to their decades of propaganda about how government can't do anything right. So this is what we got. The closest we've come to accomplishing any of what we needed to do while locked down is that we've ramped up hospital capacity (though it's not clear if we've done enough) and established a black market by which cities, states, and hospitals can acquire a fraction of the supplies they need at extortionate costs, which go into the pockets of politically connected GOP donors. There's been no real effort to establish a capable testing and tracing system that would allow us to safely re-open in phases. You still can't find any fucking hand sanitizer on store shelves.
Nevertheless, we're trying to YOLO this shit and using the threat of cutting off unemployment benefits to force retail and service workers back to jobs in dangerous conditions, in the hope that business will just magically return to normal for everyone if we pretend that it's all done. But very few people are actually going to pretend. Many of us are going to stay in our homes most to all of the time. So those stores and restaurants that now have to re-open because they've got to pay rent are going to be incurring normal operating costs but only bringing in a fraction of the revenue they need, because most people don't feel safe to go out. And those people who do go out are going to spread covid not just among themselves but also to those we've forced back to work, many of whom live with at-risk family members, and to the medical professionals who inevitably have to treat them. So we're going to see a new spike in cases, when it happens everyone will panic again, and we'll probably end up shutting shit back down again for an indeterminate length of time. And we'll probably repeat the same stupid pattern until a vaccine is produced in sufficient quantities to inoculate most people. This slapdash bullshit doesn't help anyone because it's not a choice between keeping everyone healthy and keeping the economy healthy. If we had done it right, we could've endured a few months of pain and then recovered relatively quickly. Instead, we're going to see a death toll in the hundreds of thousands and the economy is going to sink into a depression. All because Republicans don't want anyone to realize that anything better was actually possible.