When we began our foray into quarantine seven weeks ago, there was a unifying and eminently sensible rationale behind it: “Bend the curve.” The idea was this: If allowed to go unchecked, COVID-19 would overwhelm hospitals, leaving patients without beds. Short on ventilators, patients would be left to suffocate. In short, by slowing the spread of the virus we would prolong the amount of time it spread through the country, but would reduce the total number of deaths. Moreover, we would buy time for the nation’s testing apparatus to ramp up, to produce more ventilators, and to expand hospital capacity.
This concept went viral. Vox produced one of the most memorable images of the epidemic with the chart below showing cases (without protective measures) reaching a sharp peak, blowing through the capacity of the health care system, while imposing protective measures results in a longer, flatter curve that fails to overwhelm the health care system. The image spread rapidly on social media -- former President Barack Obama even retweeted it – and “Flatten the curve” became the number one hashtag on Twitter for quite some time.
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