“We overreacted” vs “it worked”

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Flattening the curve should not significantly reduce the amount of infections or deaths, but rather spread them out over time.

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It should spread out infections and deaths in older and sicker people for whom adequate medical care would not typically save. It should also reduce deaths attributable to lack of access to potentially life-saving supportive medical care. Delaying cases also “buys time” for development of better testing to catch cases sooner or find helpful treatments, which might enlarge the number of survivors in the old/sick cohorts.

Stops the spread until when?

I’m not taking a side. I’m just saying it will be obvious which side was right.

Correct. Yes, there would be lives saved by not overwhelming the healthcare system.

But it shouldn’t affect the overall number of infections, and thus the number of serious cases

The CDC operates in a vacuum. They have limited objectives... to slow the spread, And to find a vaccine. If we acted solely on their recommendations, we'd need to invoke martial law. Obviously no one wants that.

Any reasonable person should be able to see that at some point the cure will indeed be worse than the disease. When will that be? Maybe Easter, maybe not.

It's Trumps job to determine where the two lines will intersect.

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For me it’s simple. New Orleans has a problem. Louisiana does not. Lock down New Orleans. Don’t wreck the entire state

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I agree 100% with this and that is what I expect to see more of in coming months. Things will reopen but as cases spring up there will be more community lock downs

$2.2 million dollars per death if there are a million deaths

and that is only fed gov dollars

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So, when this ends it will be obvious who was right.

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Yes the media causing a panic, raiding of grocery stores, shutting down businesses, people losing jobs, etc definitely isn’t overreacting. It’s all about flattening the curve

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If this doesn’t kill 4-5 times the number a bad flu season kills it’ll be painfully obvious that we overreacted and caused a lot of damage for very little in return.

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I'd say that if this doesn't have a big death toll, then it could show we DID do the right thing. Meaning, we were able to contain it enough to not have extreme mortality.

Regarding flattening the curve, very simple analogy:
let's say you have 20 people, and can treat 5.

If all 20 get it at once, then... the weakest will show the effects first, and they will take the treatment slots. A couple may be so weak that they will die anyway.

Meanwhile, it then begins to create serious problems for the next 5, who were stronger and fought it off more.
These folks would likely do well with treatment, but since those slots are already filled, they have to do without. And you get a few deaths from that group as a result.

If you can slow the spread, odds are better that there are still slots available for treatment, when people get sick. And you use that time to add more slots, and treat better.

It's not quite that simple, but in the bigger picture that's basically the plan.

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For me it’s simple. New Orleans has a problem. Louisiana does not. Lock down New Orleans.

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Where would you start?

I can’t wait to see this