Not to be insensitive, but we can’t assume a vaccine will be developed.
Flattening the curve of infection (under this assumption) still has a similar area under the curve... (i.e. people are going to get infected, people are going to die because the virus is not going away).
One point of flattening the curve is so people won't die waiting for a hospital bed to open up. Some of those people would have died anyway, but not all of them. Even supportive care like oxygen and intubation does actually seem to save some lives, and doctors are getting better at it with time.
Additionally, treatments are getting better. Do you want to get sick in 6 months when everyone can get remdesivir and Regeneron's antibody therapy[0], or do you want to get it during a spike where you can't even be treated?
Don't discount treatment methodologies. People who get the virus now are more likely to live than those who got it early, since health professionals are learning which treatments work. The area under the curve will not be the same if we buy time for our doctors and researchers to understand more about the virus and its effect on the body.
Well the original attempt was to close to eliminate it, like many of our peer nations have done. Since we've failed at that, it's going to be touch and go so that we flatten it.
Not likely possible unless all travel between nations is halted. Also, places like north korea will still access China which the world doesn’t trust in regards to data fidelity.
Since we can’t have perfect access to information, it is impossible to stop the virus without a vaccine (and a vaccine might not be developed ever, this might be like HIV where 700k people die a year)
Flattening the curve of infection (under this assumption) still has a similar area under the curve... (i.e. people are going to get infected, people are going to die because the virus is not going away).