Seasonal flu is a perfect example as to why this natural herd immunity gamble is such a gamble. We need a new flu vaccine every year because of how much those viruses mutate meaning the antibodies produced by the body with the previous vaccine won’t work against the following year’s flu.
We don’t know that people developing an immunity to the current virus by surviving it now will enable them to be immune to it a year from now, it’s a guess. It’s an educated guess but it’s still a guess that will cost tens of thousands of lives (they’re saying 60% of us need to develop an immunity so more than 60% of the population will need to catch it in that case) and might not even pay off. We are an outlier as a nation while everyone else wants to keep infection rates as low as possible while racing to find a working vaccine.
Herd immunity is a thing, it’s how we have all but eradicated smallpox, polio, tuberculosis but those have been controlled immunisations with developed vaccines. We didn’t eradicate them by allowing 60% of people to catch them and then those that survived then protected everyone else. As far as I’m aware the only thing we protect against in this was is chicken pox!
As for we can’t just ride it out and hope it goes away depending on how readily it jumps to wildlife in this country that might actually work. The virus does not last long outside of a host body so as soon as there’s nobody left infected it will die out here.
The fact is it’s a guessing game, but when we’re the only country taking such a relaxed attitude towards it (although the government are already changing their minds on large gatherings) that outlier status does require scrutiny. From the outside looking in if appears that the concern from those in charge is more short term economic impact than the human cost.