The question I have yet to see posed is "How would society be experiencing the common flu if it had never existed before and this is the first time it jumps to

The question I have yet to see posed is "How would society be experiencing the common flu if it had never existed before and this is the first time it jumps to humans?" The first year you see an airborne transmissible disease is likely to be the worst regardless of the disease. The big problem I see is that we're comparing the common flu in its herd immunity steady state to the coronavirus in its first year. Once coronavirus settles into its steady state, we will be able to compare it to the flu, apples to apples. That being said, assuming the flu and coronavirus at steady state is approximately comparable, would it justified to react to the flu in its first year the same way we're reacting to the coronavirus in its first year? If we know there will be a modest spike in the first year that mostly claims the infirm and becoming endemic is unavoidable, is it worth doing the damage we're doing to the economy. That this is going to become endemic and likely reach steady state in a year or two (possibly longer depending on how long we retard reaching that point with lockdowns varying from geography to geography) is at this point a foregone conclusion because not every country has the natural borders of New Zealand and can completely kill this off. It will bounce back and forth between the northern and southern hemisphere indefinitely at this point until herd immunity.