You don’t have a normal economy if people don’t want to go out in public or the supply chain is interrupted as workers get sick. A pandemic will harm the economy no matter what we do, these efforts, it is hoped, will reduce the impact while also saving lives and the hospital system.
I have seen a number of studies putting the case fatality rate at 2-3%, but this number cannot be generalized to the entire population because current testing is skewed toward the most serious cases. [2]
Long-term mortality in the total population may look something like 0.66% * 0.7 assuming there are no advances in treatment (possible but unlikely, given the unprecedented efforts that are underway, and how naive we were on day one).
In general more recent studies estimating IFR should be more accurate, early ones came with a lot of caveats. If there is a better estimate of IFR than 0.66%, I would like to read it.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUK/comments/fxgk8q/early...
Takeaways: Old population, Pre-existing conditions, Skewed testing
Adjust your numbers for population. Per capita numbers for the US are far from the worse case scenario.
The paper has an overall estimate of the infection fatality rate for all ages of 0.2-1.6%.
https://www.tagesschau.de/regional/nordrheinwestfalen/corona...
That is incorrect. The worst flu wave to hit Germany in the last 20 years, 2017/2018, killed appoximately 25000 people (excess mortality). That's 0.03%, and it's not typical. Often, the number is much lower.
Note also that the results from the Gangelt study you're referring to are preliminary; there's a press release but no paper yet, not even in preprint.
0.03% or 0.1% or 0.66%, the number is low enough to be perceived as not too dangerous by general populace. Contrast that with 13% mortality rate for Italy that was widely spun a month ago. Now _that_ was scary!