Let's take a trip down #SARSCoV2 memory lane, shall we?

Here's one of the big misses from early estimates which informed @IHME_UW modeling, and ultimately policymakers: "15-20% of those who contract [COVID] will need hospitalization," said Dr. Fauci. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1233835514391867393
As some started to realize that there would be no avoiding the virus here in the US, hospital capacity was the singular focus. It was never about suppression.

After all, we only have so many hospital beds, PPE, etc - we needed to "flatten the curve." https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1232352734990520331
By March 6, we're approaching the critical days when the world began to change. We had compelling visuals on what it meant to "flatten the curve":
- Buy time
- Reduce peak health care utilization
- Prolong the epidemic at manageable levels https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1235865328074153986
So we shut down. "15 days" to slow the spread.

Here's where we went astray: We should have recognized, after 15 days, that we wouldn't succeed in suppression. We should have noted that hosp, vent, etc utilization was well under the initial estimates. https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1239698043022295043
After all, on the same day as the White House tweeted "15 days," Imperial College was warning that mitigation would not be enough to avoid health care overruns - we needed to try suppression -- lockdown -- to avoid hundreds of thousands of deaths. https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1239656828763549697
Yet, outside of NY, not much was happening, even into May. No hospitals were being overrun. But some had been convinced that there was no middle ground. NY had a terrible time despite fully locking down and staying home. How could we reopen? https://twitter.com/AshleyRParker/status/1259269915057500160
So we were warned GA would become NYC. This piece calls back to hosp capacity, w/ the mayor of Athens "worrie[d] about the state's hospitals," & the author warning "another deluge of COVID-19 cases could be inevitable. ... [I]t may be two or three weeks" https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georgia-reopening-coronavirus-pandemic/610882/
Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice

The state is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georgia-reopening-coronavirus-pandemic/610882/
Then a funny thing happened.

There were no hospital overruns in Georgia. Nor in Florida, or Tennessee, or Texas (despite dire warnings about Houston), or Arizona (despite daily updates on rising case counts).

We stayed below the magic line. The curve was already flat enough.
In fact, Georgia has had 8 hospital closures since April.

"Within a few months, our financial situation would be such that we would not be able to make payroll."

This in a state where patients were expected to abound. https://apnews.com/6b118fdcab960fd3d2b0671d99d7c4eb
Georgia hospital to close amid financial hardships

CUTHBERT, Ga. (AP) — A hospital in Georgia has announced it will close in October due to financial difficulties officials say was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. “It has become...

https://apnews.com/6b118fdcab960fd3d2b0671d99d7c4eb
And elsewhere, the modeling we used to inform our policy had gone horribly awry. IHME's model had overestimated hospital utilization in Tennessee by a mere 75x the actual need. Makeshift hospital beds were being torn down as quickly as they went up. https://twitter.com/TrackingCovid/status/1288184792153034752
But somewhere in April, after we'd turned 15 days into 30, and one month into nearly two, the message had changed. We were no longer focused on health care capacity - we were focused on 'saving lives,' and on making sacrifices indefinitely to do so. https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1253524684261470208
Here's the thing, though: The same prominent figures who are still, months later, advocating for lockdowns, acknowledged at the outset that there was no stopping this. That's why "flatten the curve," not "stop the spread," was the initial message. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1232374127098499072
And they acknowledged that long-term mass quarantine was not viable. It's why the famed Imperial College paper discussed "adaptive triggering" - enacting mitigation in response to health care utilization thresholds (which few places ultimately reached). https://twitter.com/T_Inglesby/status/1224099687956791296
Not only did lockdown measures incur an immense toll on our society which will be felt for years, they quite possibly prolonged the pain of the virus itself - for no discernible benefit in terms of the stated goal of maintaining health care capacity. https://twitter.com/KeithNHumphreys/status/1288205844799041536
So you have to wonder: Why do folks like @ASlavitt now openly promote the idea of complete elimination of the virus? Why do they advocate for the continued harms associated with strict lockdown measures, when the initial goals have been met? https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1287524301499965441
Could there be... another reason? One that has little to do with minimizing the public health and broader damage that #SARSCoV2 inevitably causes, and more to do with, as Dr. Ding so eloquently put it, "finger pointing?" https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1286790693072056323
I'd be remiss if I didn't tack on this from infectious disease expert Tom Ingelsby:

"There's no evidence that [lockdown] kind of quarantine is better for containment than airport screening, education, instruction to get tested if ill." https://twitter.com/T_Inglesby/status/1224101656184229888
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