Abysmal political leadership & people being selfish & self entitled, instead of being caring community citizens, has seen the death toll rise to over 300000 in the US, whereas the short term anguish & financial suffering that goes with lock downs has proven to be one of the main reasons why Australia & New Zealand have essentially eradicated the virus.
Yes, there was resistance from some groups against lock downs but the authorities moved quickly to introduce financial support measures & ramped up the medical system & the general population adapted to the new restrictions that were put in place.
I just hope the quickly developed vaccines now being rolled out in other countries work successfully, as the lack of leadership & slow response in many countries means the medical systems are overwhelmed & inoculating the population is the only measure left for those countries to bring this terrible virus under control.
Quite right alain7b5.
And just to place some facts in the way of the 'it's only a flu' people... see
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-vs-flu/art-20490339
"So far in 2020, more than 16 million people have had COVID-19 in the U.S. More than 290,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. in 2020. By comparison, during the 2019-2020 flu season in the U.S., about 38 million people had the flu and about 22,000 people died of the flu."
So Covid-19 has about 20 times the mortality rate of flu, as well as having many more serious long-term impacts.