https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu.html
Death rate of the seasonal flu = 0.1%
Death rate of Covid 19 = At least 2%, As high as 12% in Wuhan
The two are not comparable. And I have no doubt that for people with Cystic Fibrosis, the fatality rate is much higher. And just to be clear, these aren't % of the entire population, these are % of the people already confirmed to have the virus, dying from it.
Covid 19 exists in this odd little zone which can either make it difficult to take seriously, or make people take it way too seriously.
A death rate of 2% is, honestly, not that scary. It's not apocalyptic like pandemics in almost every* TV show and movie revolving around pandemics, where every pandemic has something close to 100%. Obviously, you let the virus run out of control and that's pretty bad. 2% of the world is still 140 million people. That'd be bad for a year or two but the human race would go on.
For those infected, the vast majority are miserable for a week or two but get over it like the flu.
So it's hard to look at these and understand what all the hub-bub is about. Besides that, these restrictions are a tough pill to swallow. Humans are creatures of habit and this kind of disruption is tough to deal with. It's a necessary evil though. It took me a couple weeks to come around. I don't know Quirk's aunt, but I think a lot of people can be convinced if you reason with them, take a little empathy with the fact that these disruptions suck, and explain in a non-combative way. If you're aggressive with it, you just piss people off and make them more entrenched.
I think what convinced me was that although the mortality rate is low and I personally have nothing to worry about, the goal is not so much to stop the pandemic from spreading... but to stop it from spreading so fast that the health care system is overwhelmed. Because I think that the prognosis is still fairly good for people with underlying conditions who might need medical care, if they can get it. But if the health care system is too overwhelmed to provide it, then people who would have survived a slow pandemic die in a fast one.