And...things can (and will) go the other way too

I've read this a couple of times. The argument that it's not a big deal 'cause if it grows exponentially it also decreases exponentially.
Not sure if that's necessarily true but the thing is, a country's healthcare system may not be able to deal with the peaks. That's something most regimes want to avoid. That's a good reason to tackle the epidemic before it looks like a normal curve.
Also, the argument doesn't make a lot of sense when talking about the number of deaths. It's probably the total number of deaths, or deaths as a percentage of the population the statistics you need to focus on. How fast it falls after it kills X number of people may be irrelevant is X is too large.