[benmaraschino]

Unfortunately, this is a really bad analysis, because, for one, the author assumes in his model that the total number of infections won't change as the result of greater social distancing. But distancing will have an effect on the number of infections, and this effect is in fact quite substantial. For example, the results of this model suggest a ~80% reduction in total infection burden with a 50% reduction in the rate of transmission, and nearly 95% with a 75% reduction: https://twitter.com/IDMOD_ORG/status/1237881591784865793

[viraptor]

And even IF the number of infections didn't change and we spread the infections over 2x time rather than 1x, it will literally save lives. Once you have that outcome available with a relatively small effort... why wouldn't you do it?