It’s a combination of factors. Flattening the curve is attempting to avoid exponential growth and making the situation completely untenable. This provides hospi

It’s a combination of factors. Flattening the curve is attempting to avoid exponential growth and making the situation completely untenable. This provides hospitals time to prepare protocols and obtain equipment. We didn’t know what we were up against. We arguably still don’t. We understand the disease 10% more than we did previously, and are using this information to establish guidelines like masks and social distancing, maybe eventually contact tracing. The ultimate intent is to suppress r0 long enough that we can develop a series of treatments and protocols (and eventually a vaccine) to minimize the negative effects of this virus. It would have been impossible to a) gather enough data in time and b) drive change in behavior in the mass population without a SIP ‘reset’ taking place.