When I was in college at USF, we learned about infectious agents like viruses and how they infected the host cells and used the DNA and RNA of the host to make new virus bodies. They would make copies and these copies would break out and infect other cells over and over until the hosts contained millions of copies. But not all the copies were exact copies, some of the copies contained differences and this is one way we get the different strains of viruses. The same Influenza virus seems to come back every year but there are also different strains too. I even read that the virus from 1918 still shows up every year. If the virus strain is very deadly and kills the host quickly, then this strain is not spread as much, since the host does not live very long. So the most damaging strains appear to disappear or have been modified into a less damaging strain.

And it seems like viruses has a greater affect on the population that already has health issues, like heart disease and other life threatening conditions. It appears the stress from the virus is too much for a body that is already compromised to bear. The healthy population appears to be less affected.

But why doesn't a virus like influenza spread thru the entire population? OR does it? It seems a lot of people get the sniffles and/or cough and fever that lasts a couple days. The young people with a strong immune response system respond with a short lived reaction. The older people with a weaker immune response system but with more viral antibodies from years of exposure respond with a similar short lived reaction. And some of us are just superhuman and don't react at all to the virus? So if enough of us have contacted the virus and now are at the point where we are no longer contagious, then the spread is halted. What is the "enough of us"? 30%, 50%? I think this is function of population density, where some place with a high density like NYC probably needs a higher percentage than that of someplace like Clearwater Beach.

And what environmental conditions affect a virus? I learned UV is a disinfectant, don't hospital spend thousands on machines that bathe rooms with powerful UV light between patients, and use UV to sterilize instruments? Sunlight contains UV, on a lower intensity than those hospital machines, but lower intensity and high exposure time can be effective. So I would think the beach would be a cleaner place than most indoor environments.

Flattening the curve? I think this means to prolong the number for a longer time period, so instead of 10,000 people infected or dying in a month and then going back to normal, we would spread out the 10,000 infections or deaths over many months and delay the return to normal for as many months. It is terrible to have a huge number of people affected in a short span of time, but the return to normal is quick, as opposed to stretching out the infection and deaths for a long time. Who benefits from flattening the curve? What affect does a prolonged infection and death curve have on the population?  

I don't recall emergency room over capacity of ventilator shortage with Influenza season, but it appears the magnitude with the latest virus was elevated in certain areas of high population density. 

I think if we want to get back to normal we have to realize this virus is not as lethal as first thought and we will have to treat this like the other viruses we encounter. The best thing to do is isolate those that are infected until no longer contagious. Isolation of the entire population is not needed and has caused more damage than the virus would ever have caused.