> I sometimes wonder how many fewer USians would have died in this pandemic had it occurred outside of an election year.

The time to judge the different strategies has not come yet. At the least, we need to wait until the pandemic is over and the counts are in. I don't trust any count until somebody takes a good look at the excess mortality. Right now it's just way too easy to manipulate the numbers in any direction until your hospitals overflow (and even then, the press might not report it). The real case numbers may be off by a factor of below 2 or over 10 and immunity in the population may already exist due to other corona viruses or maybe not, we don't know yet. Other counties which seem to be doing very well until now may still fail horribly. The economic impact may play out in vastly different ways. Currently it seems that hard containment is the best strategy but it requires coordination in a large area and high compliance in the population. In a few months, the vaccine could be available any day and it might work perfectly or very poorly.