The newspapers of the time also dubbed the Spanish flu: just a familiar grip we've seen time and time again.
China desperately wants to save face, at the cost of lives. They rejected help from the U.S. CDC as to not appear weak. They already thought they had it under control, before locking down over 50 million people and damaging their economy.
People at risk for the flu can get a flu shot. This disease kills the healthy and average aged. And we all have family members at increased risk.
Even a 2% mortality rate is absolutely horrific. Would you play Russian roulette with those chances? If 60% percent of the world gets infected we are talking many many millions of dead.
How are you going to track contacts, when someone working in a brothel gets it, or someone preparing food in a McDonald's? What if someone takes the virus back to India or Africa?
With 20% needing intensive care, even modern European countries will suffer badly. There simply are not enough beds available, even in the bigger cities.
Mortality is a red herring when you do not count the people still hospitalized after months! Look at the tiny amount of recovered people.
Despite their titanic and gruesome methods to contain it, China has failed. Imagine such an effort in Europe, where people gladly will walk away from quarantine and can not be cowered into compliance or snitching on their coughing neighbors.
We simply do not know enough about morbesity and mortality to say we overreact. Better safe than sorry when uncertainty abound.