I’m not defending HoneyBadgerDC’s position here but your analogy in this case if anything makes his point … yes you do sometimes want smaller natural fires to occur, they tend to be of lower intensity, clearing out shrubs, and reduce the risk of huge conflagrations later. Too much suppression of them is a bad thing. There are also controlled burns that manage a forest by controlling the not only the where and the when of fires but the intensity of the events. Tricky business that.
And certainly there is a time to stop spraying water, when the water is causing more damage than benefit, even before a fire is completely out.
If forest fires are managed they don’t need to be fought so hard and so often.
No one would advocate for letting a forest burn out of control, in a rush, just get it done. That position is even more untenable.
Does the analogy hold? Maybe.
There are cautions out there by experts against thinking that a vaccine is just around the corner bound to put this fire out. Mike Ryan of the WHO for example -
Keeping the brakes fully applied until and if there is a vaccine is not a good plan. Depending on a vaccine as the only path is not a good plan. It is a great hope, but not a plan.
Rushing to herd immunity is not a good plan.
Cautiously finding the moving point that maximally reduces the damages of the interventions while controlling the intensity of disease within the population within some, to be determined, acceptable parameters, hoping for a vaccine but meanwhile trying to advance to a path forward that lives with the disease if that is what the future requires … is not a good plan. It is however the least poor one. And that parameter won’t be zero any more than it will be just below healthcare system capacity.
The controlled burn fire analogy may in fact be apt.