To be fair, the "wash over" approach is what they took in the UK at first and there are still well-respected public health thinkers who say that we could have done a very aggressive protection of high-risk people and let the virus wash over the low-risk population, hastening the arrival of herd immunity.
Fauci did say, back before he started being forced to lie to protect his job, that when shown the modelling for that approach, Trump immediately changed his mind.
Imagine, though, that the modelling had shown such an approach would actually result in fewer deaths, but nevertheless many deaths. It would actually be political disaster. Nobody would believe the modelling and would say more should have been done. Even if it had made public health sense, it would be politically disastrous.
The famous Stalin* quote comes to mind: "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths are a statistic."
*which was likely never said by Stalin and was certainly said earlier by others
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/