Many politicians started out with this idea, but almost all of them have capitulated when faced with reality. A week ago Donald Trump wanted to open the country up by April 12th, yesterday he was telling Americans to expect 100,000-240,000 deaths with a successful lock down and over 2 million deaths without any mitigation. The idea we can save lives or the economy is a false choice. The economy was always going to get wrecked.
Even if you want to say Italy has 10x more cases than actually reported, that is still around 1 million out of 60 million people --- about 1.6% of the population and Italy was brought to its knees. I don't see how its reasonable to think the economy could function at 20, 30, 50% infection rates. But it goes even further than that... Political leaders, military high commands, doctors, professors / scientists, business leaders are disproportionately represented in older / high risk demographics. The experience and professional knowledge lost would be a drain on the economy for years.
