I agree with you that the numbers coming from China are probably grossly understated - just based on their clearly panicked actions.
But, just for the moment, let’s take the 2.1% fatality rate at face value. That is roughly 21 times the fatality rate for your garden-variety flu bug in any given year. Let’s also understand that it is roughly twice as communicable as the flu. Now put those numbers together, and you’ve got a recipe for 42 times the number of dead, vs. the flu.
Last year, we lost about 24,000 dead from the flu. Do the math on that - a million dead. Roughly equivalent on a per capita basis to all of our deaths from all causes during WW2, compacted into a single year.
If we are a nation of 325 million and China is a nation of 1.43 billion, how many Chinese die of the flu each year?
Do the math - and still the Chinese enact horribly extreme measures that the word ‘draconian’ does not begin to cover. The scale begins to emerge ...