The doomsday scenario is vanishingly unlikely. It's much more likely that it runs its course, tragically kills a bunch of people, but far fewer than things people willingly do to themselves, and then either disappears or becomes one more background cause of death for people too stupid or too poor to get vaccinated. It makes perfect sense to take reasonable precautions (wash your hands!) and the government needs to fund the scientists who are developing a vaccine (the anti-science government in my country is criminally negligent!) And it makes sense to keep two weeks' worth of everything on hand for actual emergencies.
But it does not make sense to stockpile five years' worth of toilet paper when you probably only have a week's worth of food on hand.
I agree with you. Chances are that it will be far less deadly than the worst case scenario. Possibly sweep through and die out.
But there is no way to know, and this is the problem.
Until we know, its a dangerous thing to ignore. The doomsday scenario is unlikely only because there is mass reaction to it. China acted fast and quarantined a large percentage of the world population to stop the spread of this. Was this an over reaction or the right reaction?
Take this analogy, your walking on a path, its very misty and you can only see 1 or 2 meters in front of you. Suddenly you come to a spot that looks like a cliff, do you turn back or jump and hope its only 1 or 2 meters deep. It could be 100m down. The best course is to probably proceed with caution and not presume its shallow.
Right now no one knows how bad this could be, and maybe cutting countries off from each other is the moderate approach. We will only know AFTER it passes.
Perhaps they've had a similar virus in the past which gives them some immunity. Like cowpox giving people immunity to smallpox.
I just think we are mostly lucky. I hope it stays this way, lots of places in Africa are not equipped to handle more health issues. Also, if this thing goes wild here I am going to Namibia, everywhere in Namibia is far away from people.