Per CDC numbers [0], in the US the death rate of the flu for the 2018-19 season was roughly 0.1%, an order of magnitude lower than the number quoted above.
This virus is an unknown. It is spreading worldwide very quickly and the growth rate is exponential. Within months, hundreds of millions could be infected without interventions. Today the number of dead is very small. If the virus were to become as common as the flu, it could make infectious disease the leading cause of death, more than heart disease or cancer. We still don't know what the long term health complications are or if you can be re-infected. The science will be in shortly, but in the mean time an abundance of caution would seem to be warranted. I will be washing my hands until then.
That's for a very obvious reason. If 40 million people in the US get Covid, as with the flu, it will probably kill between 500k and 1m people.
That's unlikely to happen based on what we know so far. However if two million people get it, that will kill as many as the flu and produce ~200,000 ICU cases. That's far beyond what the US healthcare system can handle on top of routine circumstances.
Along with a drastically higher mortality rate, Covid also produces a far higher rate of ICU outcomes than flu does. It swamps healthcare systems, as we saw so dramatically in China.
This is a greatly, greatly exaggerated number based on incomplete reporting.
We cannot yet estimate the number of unconfirmed COVID-19 cases in the US. In healthy adults, the COVID-19 symptoms are no worse than the flu. The CDC uses projections to estimate the fatality rate of the flu every year, since actual hard stats are impossible to generate. Time will tell, but this so far seems nothing more than a media frenzy.
Does anyone remember the Swine Flu? How about the West Nile Virus? What was the outcome of those media frenzies? How'd it turn out for all the people hoarding toilet paper and water bottles back then?
> It swamps healthcare systems, as we saw so dramatically in China
I don't think it's even remotely relatable to the US healthcare system, and the general health of the US population.