What advantage does waiting provide? It’s not like the disease is less deadly because 100 million people have it vs 100 thousand.

Theoretically the most efficient approach might be to quarantine only the sick or elderly, but that’s unlikely to work well. Doing absolutely nothing would cost millions of lives. So, I really don’t see any good options only some hard choices ahead.

PS: The only state without known infections is not testing people. Exponential growth is a bitch at this point.