Counterargument: China
- Virus has exhausted itself with the majority of the population. - Vaccine is developed and universally available. - Virus is eradicated from quarantine (so incredibly unlikely).
I am not an epidemiologist, just writing based off of common sense.
If the quarantines last long enough, the virus will be dead. The hosts will either be dead or will have successfully fought the infection and destroyed the virus. Unless it happens to behave like some viruses that can hide in the nervous system and similar – but there's no indication that that's the case.
There's really no great alternative to attempting to contain it. We will most likely trade lives for money and then lose the money anyway. Better to just lose the money by paying a big price early on with a radical containment strategy.