Is the Cure Worse than the Virus?

Our economy has come to a screeching halt, and there are some out there demanding that Trump suspend everything for an entire month (although I can't understand what more can be suspended.  Basically, the only things open now are grocery stores, gas stations, and pharmacies.  Shuttering those would lead to abject anarchy.)

Through this, tens of millions will be put out of work.  Untold thousands of businesses will not survive.  Our already outrageous national debt will balloon and our currency inflate.  We're flirting with a self-imposed economic depression that could last for a decade or more.

I understand smoothing the curve extremely well, but can't we do that and still leave the lights on?  The ones impacted most by this virus and the ones eating up most of the hospital resources are the old and the medically compromised.  Can't we just lock them down (and I mean really down - tight), and put the rest of the world back to work?

I don't say this as someone that pines for my old life back.  I say this as someone that is deathly afraid that the self-imposed emergency dive we've put our economic plane into is something that we will not be able to pull out of, and that our crash is just a function of when.

Is the cure worse than the virus?  We're all going to find out.