How are concrete numbers exaggerated? How are concrete numbers not fact? Neither of those figures you posted seem out of the realm of possibility here, we're still in the middle of this pandemic that will continue on for many more months.
It's kinda hard to compare previous viruses in their totality when we're still seeing thousands dying every day, no?
I was replying to your remark that "It’s unarguably the worst public health crisis in 100 years". Which just isn't true. It's exaggerations like this I was referring to.
The flu in 1918, 1957, and 1968 were worse. If not for vaccinations the flu is a more scary disease than coronavirus - it mutates yearly, has just as much if not a worse fatality rate than covid, and causes long-term damage as often or more so. Malaria is far worse, I just heard that 3000 children die of that every day. Then there's HIV, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
Through this pandemic headlines seem to always feature worst case scenarios, numbers without context, etc. This is a statistically complex subject, a moving target, and our brains are not wired for dispassionate risk assessment.
This article has quotes by multiple experts saying that this is good news, that the immune system fought off the reinfection, the person was asymptomatic, and this is how you'd expect an immune system to fight off a coronavirus.
In fact, this is all normal for a coronavirus. Experts predicted this would lessen in severity and probably end up like the common cold, or appear intermittently like a bad flu year. [1]
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/24/health/covid-19-reinfection-h...
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...
The 1968 flu killed 1-4 million people, in a world with half the population of today. The 1957 flu killed a million people.
So much about covid has been exaggerated. So many screaming headlines in the news and a paucity of facts.