That's because it's not the end of the world. There are too many people on the planet anyway. It's true that removing say 10% of them at random would be a huge disruption and possibly strain civilisation due to the effect on supply chains and production and so on (although that wouldn't apply if it was a slow process allowing for managed contraction and recruitment of replacements), but losing 1% of the population skewed towards retired people is not a threat.
Even if this is never controlled and it gets to the stage where it's endemic and people are dying of it at a constant but much slower rate, it's not a threat to civilisation. Not even if people who recovered from it this year get it again and die of it in 2022, so long as the case fatality rate stays around 1%. (And by the way none of that is going to happen because we will have a vaccine for this within two years, probably sooner.)
What it is, is a threat to your individual life. It's a very odd virus in the wide range of clinical severity seen. I can't immediately think of anything else that ranges from asymptomatic through the whole spectrum of very mild to severe to fatal quite like this one does. And while some things seem to tip the odds in your favour (being white, female, under 60, blood group O, and even, counterintuitively, apparently being a smoker) there will be plenty of young white women with O blood group who enjoy a fag who will die of this. If they were able to figure out why some people are so seriously affected and some aren't it might help, but apart from viral load I don't think anyone knows.
So it's down to "do you feel lucky, punk?" You're playing Russian roulette if you allow yourself to get infected with this thing. There may only be one bullet per 100 chambers, but do you really fancy your luck that much?
