My intuition on this is that any strategy that relies on rather precise targets to hit in terms of infection rates is doomed to fail. There is simply far too mu

My intuition on this is that any strategy that relies on rather precise targets to hit in terms of infection rates is doomed to fail. There is simply far too much uncertainty about the exact properties of the virus, the behaviour of the community and the effectiveness of the various measures that are employed to try to contain or mitigate the pandemic. The incubation period is something like 5-6 days on average, it'll probably take at least another day, likely more to get test results. So you're always at least a week behind when you're trying to examine the results of your actions, and the pandemic spreads at an exponential rate if no containment or mitigation measures are preventing it. If you get this kind of strategy wrong, at the point where you're noticing it you will have doomed your healthcare system and your population. It is the nature of exponential spread that you will have to act before it is obvious, and that if you don't do that it'll be far too late once you notice that.