I am an ED doc in a very large urban teaching hospital (Wash U/Barnes Jewish in St Louis)
This is a serious disease. Death rate (using worldwide data) is 10x that of the flu. So using numbers given by Mrmb, that is a half million deaths. But those are only deaths by COVID-19. The crunch comes when a small percentage of sick people need ICU care or Vents. If (really when) the current numbers of those infected get sick (the 10-20%) it will exhaust medical resources. The 68 yo with an MI, will NOT have the equipment needed to save his life because it is being used by a COVID-19 patient. We simply do not have enough ICU beds or vents in the entire nation to care for the large increase in medical resources. In any large city, there are already sometimes 8-12 hour waits for an open ICU bed. All the while the critically ill patient is in the ED using up the ED resources and preventing another sick person from getting care. And most small hospital ICUs are NOT prepared to care for the really sick ICU player. These places often transfer these patients to larger medical center, sometimes with 1-2 day waits. Social distancing is vital to keep the numbers NOT DOWN, but to delay , or increase time they present over. The number of critically ill patients will be the same through the COVID-19 season, we just need to have them present to the hospitals over months, not weeks. And as draconian as it seems, look at any city, and you will see too many people ignoring the recommendations which will spread the virus faster and overwhelm the system.