People don't freak out over Influenza because it is the enemy we know, it's been around for over 100 years and scientists have been studying it for decades. COVID-19 has been around for just over two months so there are more unknowns than knowns. Common seasonal Influenza does kill a lot of people each year but the difference between it and COVID-19 are the mortality rates. Influenza's mortality rate is 0.05% to 0.10% while COVID-19's observed mortality rate has 2.3% to 3.4%. If we ever get to the point where COVID-19 becomes a seasonal illness as some in the CDC and WHO have suggested, 6.8M to 200M people could disappear from the planet each year assuming a conservative 2% mortality rate. Granted, it is early on and most of the deaths have been in China which could be attributed to an overwhelmed medical system in China. Hopefully, scientists will get on top of it as they have with other epidemics...

Cheers,
Bill