Lockdowns, quasi-lockdowns, etc. could have only alleviated the rate of spread, no one can deny that.
Sure, one COULD say in the end, the same total amount of people are going to get infected sooner or later.
But no doubt the soft-lockdowns, distancing, limiting travel, and canning large crowds (sports events, concerts, school, etc) would stretch out the spread over a longer amount of time.
And apparently some places did get their medical capacity over run a bit.
And even if you don't believe that, say if the line was toed or whatever, I'm sure your quality of care goes down a bit as facilities near max-capacity as opposed to being say 70-80% full.
Treatments evolved over this period also, so time was bought for those people who benefited from that in other parts of the country (post NY).
Example: ventilators were over-used and/or mis--used; you never even hear a peep about ventilators anymore.
Plasma with antibodies can be collected and distributed, etc. Some medicines got approved and put into use (some didn't).
It appears the CFR is getting lower most everywhere with time.
Imagine if California, Texas, Florida all had the same rise in their curves at the same time frame as NY / NE USA.
Sure NYC's curve would be steeper than say Texas because of population density.
But had all those metropolises started curving upward closer to the same time due to the whole populous still traveling and interacting, it would have been much worse.
The sharp rise in cases of many other states didn't occur until later, because the rest of America got scared because of what happened in NYC, Conn, NJ, etc.
And even if you don't believe the "bullshit" above about treatments evolving, med.capacity being overrun or tasked, etc....
...then from the Fear Porn perspective, imagine if all those different metro area's infection curves went up at the simultaneously, overlapped closer, or closer in succession. Oh man, it would've been utter pandemonium, fright, shock, and awe.
Chris Cuomo would have donned a yellow toxic hazmat suit for the evening news broadcast.
THEN the economy would've just taken the hit at that point, maybe even worse so.
I could even see some of the people who seem to have behaved/governed more reasonably with our current ongoing scenario,
buckle and fold if the case I outlined above paragraph would have come to pass.