I definitely understand that. It seems especially important because of the group of people that needs ICU and recovers. If hospital overflows, they don’t get ICU, so they die.

But it’s a bit discouraging if this is the only benefit of flattening the curve. So we are all gonna get sick, but in an orderly fashion? And the mortality rate is unaffected?

There are definitely more benefits. Every country in the world is now throwing their resources into fighting this. It's much more likely we'll have found an effective anti-viral treatment after the next 4-6 weeks. We'll have ramped up production of ventilators, built temporary hospitals as needed and we should be performing millions of covid tests a day.

Mortality rate without a ventilator is probably what you see in Italy and shortly the UK.

Yes you want to get sick, but the old fashion way. The way I think of it - if we get sick with healthcare services or without.

With healthcare services intact, I likely won’t know anyone who does from covid-19 (1/200, 50% infection rate, 1% fatality).

Without healthcare services I’m likely to know at least one person who’s died. (1/20, 50% infection rate, 10% fatality).

The more we flatten the smaller the denominator.

> The more we flatten the smaller the denominator.

Nitpick: bigger (20 -> 200).

The mortality is affected only in as much as you avoided the much worse mortality rate for the no ICU capacity scenario. This is what we saw in Wuhan and now in Italy. The difference seems to be something like 5x higher mortality or so (1% => 5%).

All of us getting sick in an orderly fashion has a huge benefit even if it turns out that’s the best we can do. But perhaps we flatten the curve for long enough we buy time for treatments to come online and to get closer to a vaccine.

Beside what people write about ICUs, this lets time to buy and build other things like masks, build up the infrastructure, get organized help from the army etc etc.

Also, while a vaccine is far, medication might be nearer. So buying time is essential, beside not wasting that time.