I am curious how something like population distribution over geography would affect a model like this (obviously it would become a lot more complicated).
My understanding is, at least in the U.S., the goal of public health officials is to stagger the COVID-19 infection rate to draw it out over a long period of time. Given that there is no vaccine, the best they can do is prevent it from spreading as quickly. If 100% of 330 million Americans suddenly got sick, if ~16% of them need hospitalization, we'd run out of beds, and if ~6% needed critical respiratory care, it would be a catastrophe (one of my family members who is a medical doctor estimates there are roughly 70,000 ventilators in the country). So by slowing it down they can stagger the rate at which our medical facilities are impacted.