The purpose of the lockdowns, etc., is to minimize transmission and thereby reduce the number of hospitalizations and deaths. Masks are also supposed to have some impact on transmission. Accept this as true for a minute.
Then you also, by definition, reduce the number of people who acquire it but have minimal or no symptoms - the majority of cases. It is from within this group from which you will get herd immunity.
So when they “flatten the curve”, they are simultaneously reducing the number of those with immunity.
Immunity doesn’t just mean you don’t get sick, it means the virus dies inside you. Anyone who is immune, again, by definition, continues to physically come in contact with viruses, but the viruses die instead of being passed on. Immune people are like mini vacuum cleaners, walking around, breathing in the virus and killing it, cleaning the air of the virus around them.
The number of times this can happen will be reduced, again by definition, if the mask bit works at any degree.
So in a largely feeble attempt to “flatten the curve” for the sick, they have also flattened, and thereby extended, the time to herd immunity.
“So in a largely feeble attempt to “flatten the curve” for the sick, they have also flattened, and thereby extended, the time to herd immunity.”
Please see my reply #10 which was being finished before I read your reply above.
Cui Bono!!! Re not admitting to Herd Immunity re Covid 19 in a country, state, county or city?
Cui bo·no?
/kwē ˌbōnō/
Who stands, or stood, to gain (from a crime, and so might have been responsible for it)?
Again: To whom is it a benefit, not to recognize Herd Immunity in a country, state, county or city?
Cui bono? (Classical Latin: [kui̯ ˈbɔnoː]), in English “to whom is it a benefit?”, is a Latin phrase about identifying crime suspects.