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In addition to your points, another reason for "flattening the curve" is to give time for hospitals and health care systems to prepare for a spike in cases, so that every patient who needs critical care can receive it. For countries like Italy that were hit at the start of the pandemic, this was a serious problem.

Where I live, in Victoria, Australia, the state government has used the lockdown time to plan for and deliver a huge increase of ICU beds [1]. Thankfully, it looks like these beds may not even be necessary, but initial modelling suggested a peak of 10,000 active cases with only 500 IUC beds available.

[1] https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/thousands-of-bed...




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