Did anybody else only recently find out that there was 3 waves of Spanish Flu and it was the second wave that killed the most people?

The first wave killed the elderly and infirm like this one is and it was the second wave that killed the young and healthy due to cytokine storms. The only people who were immune were those who caught the milder version in the first wave.

So if your parents/grandparents/uncles/aunts get infected by it, what do you think? Nothing to worry, right?

Some only regret what they've said after it happens in their own circle. Well, probably not even then.

There will always be those who believe they know better than the experts  around this planet and the sad part is that they will even tell you how they have been right after all is said and done and with less deaths as from the flu.

Deaths will be lower only because of all the extreme measurements and because people are way more attentive, wash hands more, shake less hands, visit less people and so on but that's not what they will agree with for whatever reason

Exponential growth (as indicated if each n days the number of cases doubles) indicates:

a) The virus is no longer imported from other countries, but spreads in the community. Because if all cases would be imported, this would be a linear growth.

b) So far measures aren't enough to contain the virus.

So, as I said about the travel ban: too little too late.

For b) I have to say as a restriction, that it might need some days before we see effects of measures in the numbers.

If I had to worry about my grandparents or parents every day then I wouldn't get to do anything else. There are lots of scary things on the planet that can kill anyone within a moment's notice. Weirdly those things didn't cause a panic, that's probably because they are a fact of life and people learned to deal with it. Also probably because they don't have sexy names like corona and get tracked as closely as royal couples.

Yep, I worry about me or my loved ones dying, but I do it realistically and not in a panic. I don't go out there demanding quarantines of anyone with a driver's license who could kill my mom in an accident. I don't send death threats to medical scientists because they haven't solved the actual biggest threat to human health, cancer. I take my chances with things that have a very low death probability so I don't overburden a health system that has already enough to do with real threats. Also, I take necessary hygiene precautions in every flu season and not just the ones with sexy names.

Dickheads, who want to scare people into a panic by trying to invoke death scenarios of their loved ones are doing so much more harm than any harmless flu virus ever could.

149 countries with confirmed cases now. A few months ago it all started somewhere in China...

I think we can look to South Korea for a more accurate representation of the real death rate of this virus. They've done incredibly broad testing on their population, and their mortality for it is around 0.6%. This, of course, is still magnitudes higher than the flu, but it's also far from the percentages we see thrown around in the media.

What shocks me is, how badly most countries reacted. Including western industry nations. China has contained the virus with great effort, but although western countries had weeks more time to understand what is happening, planning and enact measurements, many countries fell short. East asian countries reacted pretty well, that is why Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan do pretty good and South Korea had a super spreader but since working on containing it again and is seemingly successful. Spain will probably overtake South Korean case numbers this weekend, France, Germany and the US early next week. This could've been avoided, had the west reacted like Asia did.

There is another factor in there: how much the health system is overloaded. COVID-19 has around 20% extreme cases, which needs intensive care. If treated properly because enough resources (like breathing machines) are available, than the mortality rate can be low. If the health system is run over by cases the mortality spikes. In countries like Italy and in Wuhan we see up to 5% mortality (other regions of China also had around 0.5%-0.7% mortality).

Another problem is long term effects. There is indication that more serious cases leave permanent damage to the lungs.

Yes. It has been confirmed that people who recover from it develop the antigens to the coronavirus. It'll probably take 5 - 10 years of mutations for someone to be infected again, and even then there'll be some cross immunity, meaning it'll be harder to contract it and quicker to recover from it.

@Angelus above - South Korea probably had the best response of all countries so far. But the fact their testing isn't based on a proportional demographic sample and continues to find 1 - 2% of cases almost nearly randomly distributed around the country, with no known chain of transmission, should raise some flags of concern.