It doesn't change the fact they are now carriers and are potentially going to infect a child, or an elderly, or someone with a compromised immune system.
The death rate for those over 80 is 12% or higher.
Now, if everyone shuts down their life and somehow society can survive for 3 weeks with nobody allowed to move anywhere, maybe this virus goes away.
But, I think the economic consequences of that will be a lot worse than just continuing on with normal life and making sure people over 80 and people with chronic diseases are cloistered away and cared for.
I implore you to read up on what the situation in Italy is like at this moment, and to look into why the Danish government just declared Denmark in lockdown mode.
Denmark went from 30 diagnosed cases to over 500 in 5 days. This is with an aggressive testing protocol that includes tracking, testing and quarantining every person each new case has been in contact with.
To think that the US with their limited and delayed testing is at anywhere below 20000 actual infections by now seems extremely optimistic
Everyone will get sick -at the same time-. That's a really really big deal
Every government worker who's not in a critical role or healthcare is being sent home. Most bars will close for the next two weeks, all sports activities have been cancelled, all gyms are closing down. Everyone who can work from home is working from home. Any gathering of people is discouraged
"Closing schools". Why is the media trying to undersell this so hard?
Only people who need to be in hospitals are those who need intubation.
Everyone will get sick no matter what you try to do. So the government needs to spin up more intubation servers, not block IPs...
The other problem is the 10-15% ICU rate. That swamps healthcare systems. Italy's healthcare system has nearly collapsed in the north, from just 12,000 positive cases so far. They're having to let patients die, which is why their mortality rate is so extremely high. The Lombardy region has one of the better rated healthcare systems on the planet and it can't handle what's happening. Unconstrained, Italy's healthcare system nationwide would collapse rapidly as their cases ballooned into the many tens of thousands. I'm not picking on Italy here, merely using them as a clear example of how serious this is. Every country should be treating this like a severe, immediate threat to their healthcare system continuing to function.
The population has immunization to the flu, it doesn't spread that quickly. (It spreads quickly, but not -that- quickly)
The flu is deadly, but not as deadly as corona
We already HAVE the flu season going on, so this is on top of the flu
Everyone will get sick no matter what, but how many people are sick at the same time makes an insane difference.
Given what is happening right now in Italy, I can't believe anyone would still go "it's just the flu"