>Maybe I'm just ignorant, but could you explain how a lockdown is supposed to decrease the total number of cases rather than just prolong it It's not so black

>Maybe I'm just ignorant, but could you explain how a lockdown is supposed to decrease the total number of cases rather than just prolong it It's not so black and white. We're talking about the area under the curve. The area under the curve varies nonlinearly with R0. But yes, because of the nature of the logistic function, a flatter curve will lead to fewer cases overall, once you factor in time and the assumption that eventually for whatever reason it will go away.