More like few millions in US alone, based on what happened in Italy which is more representative than China. Italy has >4% mortality rate last time I checked. And we talk about very well equipped and highly rated healthcare. I can't imagine this not having brutal effects on global economy.
Another point - unless we have proper fully working cure / vaccine, this ain't going anywhere. June ain't some magical time when virus decides to roll back because enough is enough. Southern hemisphere will keep the virus going on through our summer, so it will come back in autumn.
An additional point - this might be early to judge but it seems immunity is not gained after recovery, so re-infection is probable.
There are more points, like its high infection rate etc.
We also talk about a country in which 20%+ of the population is over 65 years old [0], compare that to China (11%) [1]
[0] https://www.indexmundi.com/italy/demographics_profile.html
[1] https://www.indexmundi.com/china/demographics_profile.html
> so re-infection is probable.
I have the info the virus is not inclined to mutate. But it is just too early to tell.
Nobody knows the long term development of this virus. You could lock up everything, the economy collapses and it would hurt people even more than the virus might have. It is a gamble at this point.
Political games come into play if people demand answers that nobody can give. If some presume to be able to do that, they are lying to your face.
If this is over in June and 100,000 people died, what would we call this? It would just be another disease probably.
For people who lost loved ones it was a catastrophe, for other part of the normal life risk. Any publicly uttered judgement has to keep that in mind, so it will always be relative. Some are more forthcoming, but probably not public officials.
Of course the virus is not under control, how could it be? I would prefer measures to reduce its spread, but that is basically intuition and listening to some doctors with the knowledge that it just buys time.
Anyone using this crisis for political points doesn't really win any cookies with me personally, on the contrary.
The incentive to cover something up is just a reflex to save face. I don't like covering something up. There is a risk of disproportionate overreaction, but I think a bad information policy reinforces this. If they covered something up, it must be really bad, right?