You are half correct and half wrong. Yes it was to flatten out the curve, but it was never to reduce the total number of viruses. It was to buy time to catch up with PPE and ventilators and to prevent overwhelming hospitals.
The virus was among us much earlier than we knew. Thus people were transmitting the virus. It's just that in most cases people rarely get symptoms and/or they experience mild symptoms, unless they have underlying health issues.
We didn't have testing due to errors and due to China not providing samples of the virus to create effective tests. The fact that we have more people being confirmed is due to testing now being available and the fact that it has been among us for longer than we knew and had been spreading all that time when we were unaware that it was among us already.
Well put. I would say that we have bought time to innovate strategies on how to function in the productive sector without spreading the virus. Whether we make use of that time for innovation is another matter.
Bump