Given that we're expecting the virus to be pretty much endemic over the long term, would it make sense to have young people, say between 20 and 30 to submit themselves voluntarily to a deliberate controlled corona infection, then isolate them while they suffer their mild sickness and recover fully.
They effectively reduce the exposure to the population as a whole, because it would make them immune, so they can't spread the disease anymore; and since it is controlled, it can be staggered in numbers, so as to not overload the healthcare system at all.
This would obviously be entirely voluntarily. However, consider giving a payment for doing this to incentivize it a little. Most importantly, it could be seen as doing a good thing, similar to giving blood.
I have not seen any suggestions like this yet.Willem quickly pointed out, that we may not be sure that younger people aren't affected as much. Another friend of mine shared a post that "in the US, nearly 40% of cases requiring hospitalization are people under 50." But it didn't state the age distribution in detail.
I read articles saying little children and adolescents show virtually no symptoms at all, and are sometimes super-spreaders because of that. But you can't make children go through a controlled infection, obviously
Most people suggested it wouldn't work due to recurrence (healed people getting the virus again), but that was conclusively addressed by Klaartje. You are immune after recovering from it, unless you have some kind of immune system issue. But, only very healthy people should be doing this in the first place (consider that you also shouldn't donate blood when underweight).
I think that most recurrence stories from WuHan and South Korea are a combination of a different flu strain combined with flawed tests; and the number of stories seem to be small. It seems like it doesn't reduce the effectiveness of my idea by much.
Personally, I still feel very uncomfortable with the idea that someone could die as a result of volunteering. Dirkje mentioned that this also prevents doctors and scientists from supporting (it blatantly violates the Hippocratic oath).
It requires an ethical discussion. I feel the strongest argument is still that it is a unique challenge for our society. Not unlike a war, where soldiers die for their (politician's) ideology. I am a pacifist, so I scoff at that example of society under stress.
So instead, being more of a nerd, I prefer to invoke Science fiction. Isaac Asimov came up with the zeroth law of robotics to deal with this: "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."
And in the movie Star Trek II, Mr. Spock famously says, as he sacrifices his own life to save the crew of the Enterprise: "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."
