Basically, the COVID-19 virus is a paper dragon and a created disaster. It is by far the least deadly "pandemic that the world has ever seen. The reality is that it is probably little if any more deadly than the regular flu. The numbers that you are seeing are not very informative because most people don't know the parameters and most are unable to understand what they really mean.
You want to talk about a pandemic, the Spanish influenza in 1917 killed somewhere between 50 and 150 million people. COVID-19 hasn't reached a hundred thousand yet. Also when you look at these numbers you need to understand that in order for this to be comparable to that REAL pandemic in 1917 it is going to have to kill 400 MILLION people.
In 1917 the US population broke 100 million, and the global population reached 1.9 billion. – Today the US population is 350 million, and the global population broke 7.8 billion this year. That means that ANY disease that hits us is going to have bigger numbers. Any disaster is going to kill more people the same of any famine.
You also can't compare the US numbers to the numbers of the European nations. Texas alone is bigger than any of the Western European nations. the US has 350 million people whereas Germany, the most populated nation in Europe, only has 82 million citizens. The US is also a big country and that allows us to spread out. COVID-19 does best in the big crowded urban environments. Long Island alone has 80 thousand+ people infected. Texas has less than 7 thousand infected for the entire state even though Texas has more people than New York STATE. The number that would have meaning would be how many people per 100 thousand are infected in each nation and state. If you look up and run the numbers the US so far is doing pretty well except in about three major areas that surround NYC, Detriot, and Chicago. Those three areas represent nearly half of the infections in the US.
The media tells us about every single death but has failed to mention that a little less than half of the people that get infected don't ever even know it and are asymptomatic. They don't talk about the people that get sick and then get well again. The panic is rediculous, the food shortage is not from a shortage of food, it is from people panicking and buying what is on the shelves faster than it can be stocked and delivered. There is no food shortage. there is no need for bottled water, our municipal water supplies are running fine. I can't explain the level of stupidity that the toilet-paper hoarding represents!
There is a real pandemic, but it isn't viral; it is a pandemic of stupidity and panic caused by the media. We are going to trash our economy for no reason except it scares a generation of people that have never had to look at the possibility of their mortality in the face as individuals before. Anyone over 50 lived under the bomb. We had atomic bomb drills when I was in elementary school. You filed into the hall, got on your knees facing the wall, closed your eyes, opened your mouth and hoped that if hit you died fast. All young men knew for a fact that they could end up sent to fight for the people of another nation that wouldn't do it for themselves. We got to see friends and family come home in boxes or pieces when we were 12 and knew that could be us in a few years. I remember polio. All kids had, whooping cough, two kinds of measles, chickenpox, and mumps when they were kids. You got sick, you got well but there were always a few that didn't make it.
My point in the above is that we lived with it. I don't ever remember not knowing that I could die of something that I had no control over. We didn't shut down the nation when people got sick. Those that were healthy worked, took care of the sick and kept things going and life went on. I guess that we were just better prepared to deal with adversity. We were raised by a generation of men that dropped everything and went across two oceans to fight and die so that their homes would never have to deal with war here. The women stepped right into the boots of the men that went to war and kept the factories running. That is just what was expected of people then...now we hide and evidently are going to let our once great nation crumble.