We would be screwed, IMHO, based on the current mitigation strategies around curve flattening that are not being communicated realistically to the public. The crop of shutdowns over the weekend were billed as 2-3 weeks.. Err, what? How are we even going to know what effect that's having without massive blanket testing? Then, nobody seems to believe anything less than 8 weeks is enough; and that's full-blown lock-down not fractions of half measures.
But as you say, the just spreads it out. So what happens in 8 weeks when we still can't let up the restrictions because if we did that the number of cases would just explode again among the uninfected population? If we aren't turning the corner by June and getting the 40% of adults who can't afford $400 in an emergency back to work..
I'm sympathetic to the UKs strategy and hope the best for them.
Exactly. People seem to be mistaking the incubation period (~two weeks) for the length of time the pandemic will last (months at minimum).
It's impossible to have a perfect quarantine, so if we were to all go back to normal after a month, the pandemic growth curve will pick up where it left off. Exiting the lockdown will need to be done super carefully to avoid this outcome.
As far as I can tell, this is probably going to be the new normal until we have a vaccine.
An Imperial College paper [1] out today predicts this under its most stringent suppression scenario; see the chart on page 10.
[1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
Exponential growth at the current rate would have it burning through the global population by the end of June, but since exponential growth becomes logistic growth after an appreciable fraction of the population is infected, June is probably closer to the halfway point than the end date.
And that's assuming zero curve flattening. The entire point of flattening the curve is to draw it out so that hospitals continue to function for longer. But this also makes the pandemic last longer.
A vaccine isn't expected for over a year, and even then, I'd expect at least a few months of logistical difficulties getting enough manufactured, distributed, and administered, especially given the state that hospitals will likely be in.