There are no easy answers, especially in the face of unknown. I do think that once the tide turned to isolation, people treat it as a panacea, like DiBlasio shutting down schools for over one month. That essentially shuts the largest city down by one month. The aftershocks will linger for a long time.
To me, the decision is similar to a wartime general who knows that a certain number of soldiers will die to prevent more from dying or to keep a position.
The element of time is missing from the full explanation to flatten the curve. Hypothetically it makes all the sense in the world to spread out the incidence of the disease. But the length of hospital stays complicate the story by a lot. There's no guarantee that a flatter curve would be much more effective if there's a 12-day ICU stay per patient. To me that means just a longer stress time for the hospitals, with possibly only minor benefits, while you're destroying the other parts of healthcare systems and the overall economy.
None of these are good choices, but people are treating complete social shutdowns as the best solution, when in reality it may not be.