This was a “lose/lose” situation. To curve or not to curve....?
It is likely that nearly same number of people will become infected.
It is likely that fewer people will die from it because of lowering the curve and spreading out the infections over a longer period of time.
This lowering, bought us very much needed TIME! Time to ramp up production, procurement, testing of medical supplies. Come up with and testing new treatments. Get a jump on creating vaccines. Educate and train the public about ways to avoid infecting others. Learn valuable lessons on dealing with future diseases by incorporating systems and management techniques/procedures now that will be at the ready for the next attack.
It (lowering the curve) was NOT for “nothing”. It just wasn’t the magic pill everyone thought it could be, it NEVER was supposed to be.
People are under the general impression that “we can fix ANYTHING”, we CAN’T!
The global warming/climate change people embrace this canard. Even IF it were true, THERE IS ***NOTHING*** WE COULD DO ABOUT IT. NOTHING! The Erff is a YUGE place. We meager humans (a pimple on an elephants ass) have not the capacity to make that kind of change. We just DON’T.
Turning off the economy was a political choice. Going with the “herd immunity” option, which was technically the better option from many perspectives, was NEVER politically viable. MILLIONS or HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of DEAD was NEVER an option. It would have been “political suicide” for decision makers.
So, for all the nipping at our heels over “we should have done this”, “we should have done that”, “we should have done this SOONER”, “we should have done that SOONER”, “we should have never done this/that” are wasting our time.
IT DOESN’T MATTER ONE BIT! Society doesn’t have the balls for implementing “herd immunity” PERIOD!
IT WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN! GET OVER IT!
And at the end you pin your whole argument on ridiculous models of millions of deaths that have been questioned and debunked almost since the day they came out. Models that defied the basics of mathematical science to suggest that what goes up must keep going up and up and up and up some more.
The evidence becomes clearer every day of just how many people get exposed to the virus without getting sick. And no matter what happened, treatments were going to be developed that would improve the prognosis of the hospitalized. We were talking about testing certain treatments almost before the shutdowns started.
We’re still waiting for Sweden to go extinct due to the unstoppable rampage of this apocalyptic virus. Ah, Sweden, we hardly knew ye.