I also think all this panic leading to drastic measures is a little over the top. And yes I do understand that people are losing their lives but the flu kills between 290,000-650,000 people worldwide a year.
I had similar thoughts, but this article put Covid-19 and the flu in perspective for me:
It’s more contagious, more deadly (particularly for older people), and it has a greater potential to overwhelm our health care system.
www.vox.com
Covid-19 is nearly twice as infectious as the flu (R0 of 2-2.5 vs 1.3). It puts 10 times as many infected people into hospital as the flu (almost 20% of those infected instead of 2%). It is between 10 and 34+ times more lethal as the flu (1 to 3.4+% mortality rate vs 0.1%).
While some of these rates may decline as we learn more, there's no doubt that Covid-19 is a significantly more infections and dangerous virus. If the total number of people who've died is lower than the flu, it's because the number of people who have been afflicted by it is much, much lower.
And while 290,000 to 650,000 people worldwide may die of the flu, think of it this way: If 10 million people in Australia were to get it in the next year (not an outrageous assumption given the higher infection rate, and that some people have talked about 70% of a country's population being infected), and the mortality rate is indeed around 3%, then that's 300,000 people who would die from it, just in Australia alone.
The measures being taken do appear in some ways to be over the top, I agree. But the operative word is "appear". Paradoxically, the more the restrictions and inconveniences are placed on people, the less obvious it will be that these impositions will have been worthwhile, because the sky will not have fallen.