On one hand, it's a harder problem than you're giving it credit for. We're likely to end up with a death toll of a heavy flu season or a bit above, but that's because the country's taking it seriously, building out the required healthcare capacity and taking extreme mitigation measures to make sure there's time to do it. New York has unused ventilator capacity now, and will likely be able to source enough ventilators to keep up even with their peak, but that's only helpful because they've worked at breakneck pace to remove every other obstacle to scaling up the healthcare system.

On the other hand, your last point does reflect a real problem with the media's strategy here. Gross manipulation doesn't allow the media to effectively communicate the subtle distinction between "this is an emergency, we must act urgently or New Yorkers will think they've been hit with the plague" and "our emergency response measures are largely expected to work, it will be tragic but not the end of New York".