[whyhow]

>I get that the disease is more deadly. But is this one of those cases where it's better to pull hard and rip the band-aid off in one go? Nobody seems to really want to broach this topic seriously.

If you "rip off the band-aid" then hospitals will be overrun and more people will die because they couldn't get adequate care. The idea is to slow transmission until we get better treatments or even a vaccine developed.