I think all the current measures are for the purpose of curve flattening. The volume under the curve (infected people) will be the same but it will be spread over a longer time period and hopefully avoid a spike of cases that will crush health care systems.
Unfortunately that math doesn't work. The US has roughly 100k ICU beds. Critical patients are spending about two weeks on a ventilator. Doing the math that means we can treat a maximum of 2 million patients this year.
Assuming half the country gets infected and the 20-30% hospitalization rate remains that's 35 million or so patients.
So best case we can treat about 5% of the cases. And that's if we let no other patients into the ICU. Which isnt practical because they run at ~80% capacity or more anyways. So really that number drops down to more like 1%.
The only option is to contain it or watch millions die.
