There is no black or white answer to this. It depends mostly on the number of deaths a given government is OK to tolerate. It seems China, South Korea & Europea

There is no black or white answer to this. It depends mostly on the number of deaths a given government is OK to tolerate. It seems China, South Korea & European countries decided to have the least possible deaths. Now what would be the number of fatalities if we'd let things go? For the reasons you mentioned the fatality rate is very hard to even estimate. Italy had 4000 deaths due to Covid-19 in 4 weeks which is bad enough. As a comparison France had 8100 death due to flu during the 2018-19 winter, and 30000 deaths in 2 weeks due to a heat wave in 2003. Would the Covid-19 overrun those figures with no containment measures. My estimation is that it would. For Germany: it turns out the virus has currently spread between younger people, explaining the low number of fatality for now. Maybe there are more cautious as well.