I think I’m failing to understand something basic. What exactly is the endgame with this social distancing strategy?
Doesn’t flattening the curve just mean moving the spike to later when you try to ease the mitigation measures?
The responses make me think far few people have looked at the y-axis of the flattening graphs. We’re not talking turning 2x into 0.95x capacity. We’re talking something like 10x to 3x or so. The overwhelming of hospitals cannot be avoided. At best fewer people die waiting.
I think it’s too soon to really say how well lockdown is working. And that if R0 isn’t below 1 with current measures, we will try to tighten it even more.
I concluded that to "flatten the curve" you would need to keep R around 1 (cybernetically up and down that level) for anywhere between 5 to 10 whole years (at current medical capacity). That's why we either squash or mitigate.