First, I hope you are all well and you take good care of yourself and yours.
I am aware there is a thread in the mudpit about COVID-19, but I would like, here, to discuss response options as informed by current science and steer away from political recriminations and bickering.
The incentive for posting this is this excellent paper.
It's rather short and a good read but I will briefly summarize it here.
There is a number of NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) which are presently available:
The first three (CI, HQ, SDO) aim at mitigation, or the "long war" of the thread's title. With the addition of the last two (SD, PC) we have suppression, that is the "bloody battle".
For example China used suppression while Taiwan uses something akin to mitigation (akin, in the sense that SDO is not mandatory).
The argument is that most countries do not have the necessary means (an all encompassing regime with near totalitarian powers) to implement suppression especially for an extended period of time. Therefore suppression efforts are eventually bound to fail, after they have placed a horrendous strain on our existing resources.
On the other hand, mitigation will tax society less, at the cost of a considerable death toll now and in the near future, but will stave off the collapse of our health systems.
You can see below the chart with the availability of hospital beds in each scenario
Your thoughts.