being contagious when asymptomatic. Those are reasons for concern.

However, the other points don't really land for me.

We don't know what the mortality rate is. It is likely that the number of deaths is slightly under-reported and the number of infected cases is largely under-reported (because widespread testing isn't available). As a result, just taking the currently reported number of deaths and dividing it by the currently reported number of cases is apt to provide a very inaccurate estimate of mortality rate.

Also, the majority of deaths have been in China -- terrible air pollution and a lot of smokers. Looking at the mortality rate in China does not give an accurate picture of the likely mortality rate in the U.S. -- we have lower rates of respiratory issues.

You point to the presence of a flu vaccine. That's great. We still ended up with 30M cases of the flu and 30,000 deaths. That's WITH a vaccine. The flu can be nasty and dangerous. We don't completely lose our shit about it.

COVID-19 is not Ebola. It's not MERS. It's not SARS. For the typical, healthy person who contracts it, it manifests as a cold or flu.

Again, containment is important -- as is developing our capacity for testing and treating -- and for developing a vaccine. I'm just surprised we haven't taken these draconian measures every winter for the flu -- since it killed far more people last year than COVID-19 will this year in the U.S. -- by several orders of magnitude.