Misunderstanding what COVID's biological exponential growth characteristics actually means has tricked people and decision-makers over and over, because it's hard to understand for many people (1) and many people are really incentivized to not understand it for selfish reasons (2). Witting and unwitting ignorance - exactly what science and statistics can help us with so we humans stand a better chance than animals during a pandemic.
Given the transmissibility and characteristics of the virus, if your case count is growing, you are inevitably going to fail. There is no "safe level" of COVID spread when it can balloon on you in a matter of weeks and herd immunity is not an option - it's too far away and the consequences of pursuing a natural immunity is a collapse of your health system, economy and the trauma of tens of thousand of dead in your society. This was all known by about February 2020 and remains true for this and all past and future highly transmissible, deadly diseases.
Exponential case growth is a biological certainty without social intervention. The right time to act is always sooner than you think - it will always be cheaper and less disruptive in the short and long term costs. The past year has proven that over and over again in small and big ways.
For example, with 10 cases you could contact trace them with a team of people each and have a health support person standing outside every one of their doors for two weeks to guarantee quarantine.
This approach would have seemed costly, harsh and an over-reaction to those that don't get/ don't want to understand exponential growth. But it's a fraction of the cost of a year of disruptions from months-at-a-time partial shutdowns throughout the economy with all the trauma of thousands of dead.
