So, my questions are:
Were the 2,945 people who died from COVID-19 a lot more important the other 747,000 people who have died in America this year?
Were they super critical to the economy?
Were they more loved by their families?
A. Of course not. Nobody has suggested otherwise. But that is completely irrelevant to the issues driving policy-making. But one has to be willing to discuss those issues, and for reasons that remain unclear, you are unwilling to address them (see below).
If 3,000 deaths shut down the USA economy, costing $2.2 Trillion to fix: What will 200,000 deaths cost?
A. 3,000 deaths did not shut down the USA economy. Other issues, that you apparently refuse to even discuss, caused the temporary curtailments of most of our economy. Your question's reflecting your inability to understand those issues and what is driving policy making, is why "numbers people" can be so out of touch with reality that their ideas are largely ignored by reasonable people and their talents unfortunately go to waste.
Each year 40,000 to 50,000 people die in the USA from the flu. Before they died, didn't a lot of them go the hospital and need a respirator? How did our healthcare system deal with all of those dying people?
A. Your stats are wrong (and also imply ignorance of the issues) again. Also your question reflects a misunderstanding of various facts.
Mortality from influenza varies considerably from one season to the next (some years it is much lower than the range you claim). More importantly, our healthcare system has to "deal with"
far more patients than just those who die each year.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html If data exist to show how many flu patients who also require hospitalization also require ventilators (health care workers wear respirators, patients (some) require mechanical ventilators), I am unaware of it. But I am confident about the following:
1. Flu patients didn't all go to the hospital during the same 2-3 month period, as, during the initial surge, happens with COVID-19.
2. The health care providers who treated those patients had been vaccinated for influenza, which provided substantial protection against their becoming infected by their patients, unlike COVID-19, for which there is no vaccine.
3. There has existed proven, FDA-approved treatment for the most common strains of flu (unlike for COVID-19).
4. Flu, while transmissible, has a shorter incubation period and becomes symptomatic earlier in the disease course, than COVID-19, which is why flu has a lower Rnaught than COVID-19, making flu much less contagious than COVID-19, and thus less of a threat to infect health care providers and other members of the public.
5. Flu spreads far slower, and less broadly, than does COVID-19, which spreads rapidly and insidiously.
6. Point of care testing for flu has existed and is widely used, enabling rapid diagnosis and identification of infected people. Such testing for COVID-19 has not existed, resulting in delays in diagnosis, positive identification, and quarantine measures, exacerbating spread.
7. Mortality rates from flu are about 0.1%, while COVID-19 mortality has been estimated at 2-3%, but hopefully will be lower in the U.S (currently about 1.9%). So, mortality of COVID-19 is, so far, generally estimated to be 10-20 times greater than flu.
8. Flu has never (in recent years) caused a complete overwhelming of our health care system. COVID-19 could, in some areas, and especially if aggressive mitigation measures are not taken.
9. Flu has never resulted in mass rationing of health care that would be necessary to save patients' lives. COVID-19 threatens to do so, which, if it were otherwise preventable, nearly all Americans (except a few numbers people) would find repulsive, contrary to their sense of morality, and unacceptable.
10. Flu has never presented the level of risk to treating health care workers that COVID-19 does. Large numbers of doctors in Italy have died (unverified report yesterday said over 60). Health care workers are humans, have families, and (for those who care only about statistics) take many years to replace when they suddenly disappear from the workforce.
11. Flu has never presented the level of risk to society generally, including the general work force, that COVID-19 does (far higher risk of morbidity; 10x-20x higher mortality), especially until there is an effective vaccine.
12. Flu disease burden on the health care system does not disappear just because there is an outbreak of COVID-19. COVID-19 outbreak
adds to the disease burden of flu. The health care system is not prepared for this
added burden either in terms of equipment such as personal protective equipment (masks, shields, gowns), clinical equipment (ventilators), or facilities (ICU beds), or in terms of skilled professionals (ICU doctors, infectious disease doctors, ICU nurses, respiratory therapists). Hospitals can't afford to have hundreds of ICU beds just sitting around waiting for a pandemic that requires additional ICU beds and staff to attend them.