A little different situation though...doctors are trying to save lives and keep people safe. 

Based on your thinking, I am guessing that you have never ran a dairy.

Imagine a dairy were they had trouble getting help or decided to stop raising/breeding replacement heifers for a few months or years. In 1-2 years (0.5-1 generation) they will have a shortage of replacement Springers for their herd do to the temporary shortage and will be forced to purchase some replacements to keep the barn full and productive. If this process goes on too long or happens at several dairies in the same area, there are not enough replacements available so they end up trucking them in from further away and buying cull cows to fill the need and end up with a lot of junk cows because the replacement screening process is not as good because they need the cows. The primary result of the delay 1-2 years prior results in issues for several months/years to come.

I use the dairy analogy because it closely fits the situation at hand because it is not much different if you think about the future and replacement of qualified individuals for the job market. If we set back our children's education 1-2 years that will create a temporary shortage of doctors, nurses, lab techs, etc in the future years/decades. We will not see this shortage/issure for 10-20 years, but when it comes we will end up hiring a lot of temps. Since there is a shortage of temps, they will likely come from other countries or standards will be lowered resulting in less qualified individuals in the job market. Perhaps past flaws will be overlooked because we need workers, much like a dairy keeping a 3 titter or hard breeder because they are short on cows. The teachers teaching today is as important or even more important than the doctors and nurses since they are the future and we should be looking at the long term consequences of the actions not just the short term consequences.

FWIW the dairies that followed your strategy of only focusing on the milk cows and not the rest of the herd often end up bankrupt or in financial ruin. The difference is that the medical field, unlike dairies, can command their price and will be able to charge accordingly to offset their added costs to keep the doctors and nurses around for extra years to make up for the lag in replacements which will result in inflated medical costs in the future. The point is large scale, temporary disruptions to a steady state process have long lasting supply chain issues that add significantly to costs. This should not to be taken as lightly as some of those in charge are doing without thinking of the consequences 20-30 years down the road.