Has the world over-reacted to coronavirus?

I am not being flippant honestly.

As at yesterday the grim headlines shows 2.25 million cases and attributed in causing over 150,000 deaths worldwide, in over 235 affected countries since December.

My question is based around a few things:-

Clearly this can be a horrendous experience for those who have it bad, survive and thankfully recover but symptoms appear to go from anywhere between ‘mild and death’. Pre-existing health issues, age, sex, DNA, smoking, size, ethnicity all play their part with the death rate likely to end up somewhere between as little as 0.01% and up to maybe 4%.

Test results so far show that between 50% and 70% who get it will not be affected in any way with no symptoms.

I estimate that to mean maybe 35% will get symptoms, less than 10% of the 35% could be bad enough for ICU, which is then 50/50.

With those stats in mind should we all be in lockdown? Is there enough justification to furlough staff, close businesses, make millions jobless and stifle global economies? I’m not so sure there is.

The ‘death figures’ headlines for each country seem very misleading in their fear-led hysteria. Take the UK for example…on average throughout any given year we average 1,600 people dying per day. I suspect not all the reported daily death totals are additional deaths. Some will have been receiving palliative care, some will be ‘end of life’ or ‘do not resuscitate’ patients and many of the deaths will have likely been expected due to either old age or pre-existing illnesses. My point being that for example, on a day where 800 deaths are attributed to covid-19 would a high percentage of them have died that day or that week regardless OR is it that these 800 extra to the normal 1,600 per day?

With the last point still unclear…but we say it is only covid-19 causing these 150,000 deaths around the world which is significantly less than the people at a Glastonbury weekend. I am not being flippant about loss of life in any way but the global media coverage particularly seems disproportionate now. It is morning, noon and night saturation and no other news appears to exist anymore. Millions died in Ethiopia and Rwanda with nowhere near this coverage.

I refer to media reporting with fear based tone so find it laughable that sensationalistic headlines suggest the UK may end up being the worst country in Europe in the end. If the virus is as infectious as these very same people are reporting then surely logic says the most densely populated place with significant numbers as the UK will naturally suffer the worst. It is common sense, no shock in expecting such an occurrence so why scream out such another crazily scary headline at people? In the same way they tend to report fit healthy people dying more than focussing on those recovering.

I think media caused governments around the world to overreact.