Qwark/ Ozgrade 3
Comparisons with other illnesses/events based on numbers alone is irrelevant. The majority of the population will be infected with COVID-19 eventually. For most it will be a relatively mild illness, no worse than the flu. But for some it will be severe and need intensive care support over a prolonged period and for a significant minority of those >80yrs (i.e. 1/5) it will be fatal.
The rationale of current measures is to stop everyone becoming infected all at once, which would overload healthcare systems (look at what has happened in Italy) and lead to such things as having to leave people to die, mass graves etc because of a lack of facilities, equipment and staff. This is not hype, but the inevitable result of the cold hard metrics of pandemics. Luckily we have fearless leaders who (eventually) listen to those who have spent their careers studying and preparing for these sort of events.
Hard as this is going to be for all of us, the alternative of doing nothing would have lead to the same economic outcome but with far more deaths.