Flatten which curve?

Nearly ten weeks have passed since the Washington Post shared the outstanding simulation illustrating the spread of a virus in a population.   Nearly all of us have at least heard the phrase:  "Flatten the Curve".   It's even a hashtag now, which we'll use: #FlattenTheCurve.

Collective behavior over Memorial Day Weekend in the USA suggests that millions of US citizens never got the memo.

Perhaps it's because there is a great deal of data, and there are multiple "curves" being shown by the media (and researchers).   This is inevitable when discussing non-trivial physical, biological, economic, or social phenomena.

We use plots to represent not only the total number of infections documented to date (positive tests, total), but the CURRENT number of active infections (original curve to be flattened in the simulation and in multiple other graphs), the daily count of new cases, the daily death count, and the total cumulative death count.

The total number of infections would flatten all by itself: no social distancing, no mitigation.   It would flatten because the world has a limited population.  Sooner or later, the virus will run out of people to infect.   The *WRONG* curve will flatten, after our health systems have collapsed and the economy is damaged almost beyond repair.

NEW CASES or ACTIVE CASES or even FATALITIES:  those are curves we want to flatten at the lowest possible level. 

Why does it matter, if "we already had and passed our peak", if hundreds of people crowd into small spaces with no personal protective equipment? 

Any flattening obtained to date can lead to either (a) the desired result, with the number of active cases continuing to decrease and eventually approach zero; or (b) a disastrous resurgence of exponential increase in new cases - and deaths.

Option (b) has always been lurking in the shadows.   Not even the most pessimistic reports would suggest that more than 2 or 3% of the US population has been infected with the novel coronovirus.   Even if that number were 10%, we would still have THREE HUNDRED MILLION vulnerable humans.   Individuals who will catch the virus and develop COVID-19 if exposure results in a sufficient viral load to be transferred.

Now is not the time to allow math anxiety to trigger disregard for what experts keep telling us.   New infections could spike dozens of times if we continue to change our behavior.   Just hiccups in the rate of increase of total cumulative infections if our healthcare system collapses and we proceed to march towards that situation where, within a year, every american has either survived COVID-19 or died from it.

Don't become a statistic - a new infection. #FlattenTheCurve.  The right one.