A few facts:
A person with the flu, on average, transmits it to 1.4 other people. A person with coronavirus, on average, transmits it to 3 people. Doing the math, if 1.4 people each gives it to 1.4 people, etc, taken to 10 levels of transmission, you will infect 60 people. With coronavirus, 3 people infecting 3 people, etc, 10 levels out is 59,000 people. You read that right. Plug it into a calculator. I didn't quite believe it either.
Most coronavirus infected people are asymptomatic, but can transmit the virus for up to 14 days. Flu is contagious for 3-4 days.
Flu is fatal for 0.1% of those who get it, frequently fairly quickly, in a few days. Coronavirus patients who eventually die are frequently on ventilators for 1-3 weeks. That's 1-3 weeks that someone else does not get to use that ventilator or ICU bed.
Flu fatalities occur over a stretch of many months, so that on any given day, the ICU is not filled with flu patients, which in turn means there are beds for those with other conditions.
Just doing the math from the way the numbers are rising (see my first point), NY alone is expecting 36,000 patients to be bad enough to need ventilators one month from now. There are only 3,000 ventilators in the state. I'm a physician. If that happens, people will be dying in the hallways, in the parking lots, etc. One in 7 people over the age of 70 who contract the virus will die. Find 7 of your parents and their friends, then point the finger. "Sorry, you don't get to survive." In the US, the stats seem closer to one in 5.
By isolation and correct social distancing, including closing all non-essential businesses, the rate of spread will slow. That 3 people infected drops closer to flu rates. THAT is what is important. People will still die, unfortunately. But:
1.) Fewer people will get sick all at once, so that our health care system has a chance of keeping pace. That includes manufacturing of needed supplies, medicines, ventilator parts. If we don't have enough masks, for example, in the country, more health care workers will contract Covid and be out of the equation, etc. And we avoid the people dying in the hallways, etc. And everyone that needs the ICU for other ailments will get to use it.
2.) We buy time to develop a vaccine, or treatment, so that ultimately less people die overall.
I would love it if we could just make everything back to normal. If we do, the 70,000 that died from the flu will pale in comparison to the 1-2 million that estimated will die just from coronavirus in the US. That still doesn't include all the other medical conditions that wouldn't normally be fatal, but will be without access to our usual health care system.
I have 4 offices with 40 employees, most of whom I furloughed on Monday. I'm taking no salary for at least 2 months. We're making sure every employee can get 2 weeks salary to cover their expenses while they have time to get unemployment. We are still seeing emergencies, and recent studies show that my specialty is one of 4 most likely for the doctor to contract coronavirus from their patients. I WANT normal life, badly. But you can't ignore facts.
We will have a vaccine, 12-18 months from now. At that point, hopefully sooner, life will be pre-corona normal as it can be. Cruising will happen again, in whatever companies are still standing.