Vince, I think you know better than to suggest we ignore the flu. For the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, we spent $7 billion in suppression efforts, most of it for vaccines and testing kits, which (tests) were available 17 days after genome sequencing.
What’s different about this is that it’s more virulent and more lethal. No vaccines, no herd immunity. It has proven capable of completely overwhelming the hospital system, or so it has been reported. People who advance the “just the flu” argument either don’t accept those reports, believing them to be media hype, don’t care or don’t think the potential economic damage is worth avoiding 100,000 deaths over a normal flu season, if not more.
While I can accept that harsh calculation, I personally can’t look my nurse friends in the eye and say, sucks to be you. I’m going to the movies. No evidence yet that there’s some acceptable median between the two camps.