>I also understand that we are -not- trying to contain the disease, just "serialize" its progression (so to speak) through the population.
That's not true. Even with massively ramped up hospital capacity, we'd still have to spread it out over years to support the whole population getting sick. And realistically, if you can keep the disease progression spread out over a long period of time, it means you've stopped the exponential growth (i.e. R0 <= 1), and it isn't that much harder to actually contain it.
What we want to do is to contain it using blanket measures until we can get our act together with large scale testing, contact tracing, and basic sanitation measures (e.g. general mask wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing by the public without needing to lock everything down). This was where China got to after an early lockdown, and it's where South Korea has always been (without the need for a massive lockdown in the first place). Then in a year hopefully the disease can be stopped altogether with mass vaccination.
That's not true. Even with massively ramped up hospital capacity, we'd still have to spread it out over years to support the whole population getting sick. And realistically, if you can keep the disease progression spread out over a long period of time, it means you've stopped the exponential growth (i.e. R0 <= 1), and it isn't that much harder to actually contain it.
What we want to do is to contain it using blanket measures until we can get our act together with large scale testing, contact tracing, and basic sanitation measures (e.g. general mask wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing by the public without needing to lock everything down). This was where China got to after an early lockdown, and it's where South Korea has always been (without the need for a massive lockdown in the first place). Then in a year hopefully the disease can be stopped altogether with mass vaccination.