I told my wife that I've come assumed shelter-in-place IS in place until a vaccine has been developed. Either that, or herd immunity is to a point where going outside isn't a game of Russian roulette.
OPTION 1. (SWEDEN) Control spread just enough to not overwhelm the health care system, but no more than that, in order to get to herd immunity as quickly as possible. This assumes that the area-under-the-curve will be very similar to any option that spreads the time-frame out. This level of lockdown is possible to implement for long periods of time because its impact on regular life is relatively moderate and it doesn't require extreme testing availability or extreme population compliance.
OPTION 2. (S KOREA) Control with aggressive contact tracing in order to attempt to eradicate or outlive COVID. This assumes that COVID can be controlled and that doing so will ultimately reduce the area-under-the-curve (because if it didn't, spreading the time-frame out would be pointless). This level of lockdown is possible to implement for long periods of time because its impact on regular life is relatively moderate but it does require extreme testing availability and very high population compliance.
We don't yet know what the full impact of 1 vs 2 will be because of externalities that are hard to model, but both seem like legitimate approaches.
OPTION 3. (USA) Control spread aggressively so herd immunity won't be reached for a very long time, do this using a shelter-in-place model that will destroy the economy so you'll be forced to abandon it at some point, have no post shelter-in-place plan so resurgence is practically guaranteed since the goal isn't herd immunity nor aggressive contact tracing.
Option 3 is the most destructive, so let's choose that one.
Total deaths IMHO is much more comparable statistic between countries. By that metric it looks a little better for the US, since we have slightly less than a third of the world death total.
The US is somewhere in the middle of the pack on this metric.
OPTION 2 is even still a possibility IF we massively ramped up testing and contact tracing. This is possible in theory, but we just not hearing ANYTHING about the real status of mass testing and/or contact tracing procedures (including things like the apple-google app).
Option 3 is a consequence of not delivering on Option 2.
No one is advocating holding the SIP just because its fun. The reason is because of a lack of control on it (Option 2).
Removing SIP prematurely and having a resurgence WILL destroy the economy as well, along with human lives. It's the worst of all options.
There could be anywhere from 5-100x that amount. Lots of people without or with very mild symptoms. Very hard to know without 10-100x the tests we are doing.