A grizzly bear is trying to eat you, so you climb a tree to get away. He sits at the bottom of the tree because his hunger can wait until you come down. He has lots of fat and can go months without eating. You sit there in the tree for days, hoping he will go away but he never does. It rains a bit and you can get some water, but slowly you are starving to death. Finally, desperate and weak you decide to come down and sneak by the bear, but you are so weak and slow that you don't have a chance by now.
It's easy right now for us to hide in the tree, the government is making it rain, but we're not being fed and eventually we're going to starve...
You can't minimize the pandemic, you lose credibility when you do that. But we need to start taking a longer view to the consequences of the measures the government is taking too contain it and weigh that against the as yet unforeseen consequences of months/years on lockdown.