You can only shelter when you know you have it which comes after a period of being contagious and unaware.
"research suggests that people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are at their most contagious in the 24 to 48 hours before they experience symptoms." [1]
Alternatively, the elderly can shelter at home until they're vaccinated. Hardly seems sensible for the world to be put on hold for a year for an illness that only a small subset of the world population are highly vulberable to.
The World Bank estimates 150 million will be pushed into extreme poverty due to COVID-related lockdowns:
Yes, except elderly need care. And we didn't have the vaccine available until not that long ago.
Your suggestion that you can safely just quarantine and not be a risk to others is flat out wrong because you are at your most contagious 24-48 hours before you have symptoms.
Also you may not have immunity after you sheltered and recovered.
I'll agree with you that the response was pretty terrible though.
My point is quarantining the healthy majority for over a year, when they are not vulnerable, was not a proportionate response to the pandemic.
The links I provided give some indication of the poverty and educational disruption this causes, but unfortunately it's hard for people to admit that mass-quarantines were and continue to be wrong, because this issue has been politicized.
Maybe you're right, and quarantine after contraction of illness was not a fully effective method of transmission control, but just the elderly isolating, instead of every one, was, and is a much more proportionate and sensible way to deal with a pandemic that only the elderly are highly vulnerable to.
This seems to be a big part of your reasoning but I don't think this is true. Yes, risk does skew there. But there are large numbers of non-elderly people who have been severely affected.
