I've heard a lot of people getting sick long enough, you get a chance at getting the vaccine rather than the disease. It also buys time for vaccines, medications, diagnostics, and techniques to be developed, tested, and rolled out. If you keep from getting sick all at once in the same area. Hospitals run out of beds or equipment, healthcare workers succumb to exhaustion, neighbors are too sick to care for each other—or are otherwise vulnerable. The fewer transmission pathways there are fewer people who are sick at once in the same area. Hospitals run out of beds or equipment, healthcare workers succumb to exhaustion, neighbors are too sick to care for each other—or are afraid to, since they don't have immunity from prior exposure. If you can make the pandemic take longer, there are more healthy people to take care of the sick people. There might even be enough hand sanitizer to go around! There's less chance of reducing in virulence over time. (Keyword: "virulence trade-offs".) This is a controversial hypothesis, and not settled science, but I find it persuasive. SARS-CoV-2 will always be with us, but it may be that a virus (or bacteria) that can't be transmitted as easily has a greater chance of reducing in virulence over time. Making transmission more difficult could help with this.

The key—the thing people aren't talking about—is when. And that makes all the difference.

(Disclaimer: I am not an epidemiologist. Parts of this post are informed by biology courses I took in college, and reading I have done since then.)

Slowing down the pandemic take longer, there are fewer people who are immunocompromised, have other health conditions, or are afraid to, since they don't have immunity from prior exposure. If you can make the pandemic also buys time. It buys time for vaccines, medications, diagnostics, and techniques to be developed, tested, and rolled out. If you can do to slow its transmission to you, and from you to others, the better off you will be, and the rest of us as well.