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> Why on Earth is this a good model?

It's not but I guess it's the best they have right now.

Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore are still functioning and have "contained" the virus. The number of cases/deaths did not explode despite contracting the virus much earlier.

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It's good you put "contained" in quotes. Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong are all (according to this plot [0]) showing exponential growth in the number of cases. It's a slower exponential than elsewhere, but it's still an exponential.

[0] https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...

Well, that's how these graphs tend to look like for a while for infectious diseases. All we can do at this point is reduce the growth factor so that doctors don't have to choose who gets to use lifesaving machinery and who dies like in Italy.

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