"Fortunately, I am not responsible for making policy."

An academic physician and researcher at an Ivy League institution in New York City writes an anonymous article in the Federalist asserting that

What the media and policymakers are not telling us is that the longer we delay the development of herd immunity, the more elderly or high-risk people will become infected and die.

...The only way we are going to beat COVID-19 is by developing something called “herd immunity.” Herd immunity basically means that once a certain percentage of the population develops immunity to a virus, the rest of the population will also be protected. That percentage varies, but is often around 60-70 percent. This is why we don’t need to vaccinate 100 percent of people to eradicate or severely limit the spread of infectious diseases (e.g., polio, smallpox, and measles).

...only young and healthy people contribute to herd immunity. Elderly and medically ill people generally do not contribute to herd immunity because their immune systems are not strong enough to develop an immune response.

This is not new or breaking science. To illustrate what happens when you don’t have herd immunity, look no further than the outbreaks we’ve had in areas where that immunity has dipped below the necessary levels.

In 2019, there was a massive outbreak of the measles in New York City for that reason. In 2014, a measles outbreak in Disneyland sent the number of cases to a 20-year high. Without herd immunity, where enough people have had the disease to avoid driving major outbreaks, future spikes will likely be much bigger.

...Therefore, if we stop the quarantine for all low-risk people now, herd immunity would develop more quickly. If we also were to keep the elderly and high-risk people isolated from everyone else during this time, including their own family members (i.e., a partial quarantine), we would save countless lives, while also decreasing the stress on the medical system.

Read more here.