The virus doesn't belong in the traditional influenza category but that doesn't mean the better avenue to have chosen would have been to let it run it's course. With Mers and Sars the virus was so deadly it killed its hosts before it could take hold as a deadly pandemic, covid acted like a flu and generally was more dangerous to the same classification of those susceptible to death from flu. The fact this spread so fast leaving many people who were infected alive means this was not like what would have happened if Mers and Sars got a foothold. The problem is not leaving it alone to run it's course naturally, we are actually feeding into it's ability to produce vaccine derived variants.