Urban centers used to have kids congregating in non-purpose built places all the time, before that was all stratified away. That's precisely what GP was saying I think.

#2 wasn't about suppressing the virus to zero (true, no place succeeded at, not even China), it as about avoiding long stretches of strong countermeasures by applying lighter countermeasures earlier. They still required some escalation for maybe a few weeks but that's far from what people had who had to dig themselves out from underneath a massive wave they ran into at full speed.