It was too early to tell in January.
By the time this burns itself out, I think it could be worse than the Spanish Flu. It really depends on how fast a treatment or vaccine becomes available and whether it can penetrate the defenses of the countries which have succeeded in containing it like China.
Take the population of any state or country. Multiply it by 70%. Then multiply that number by 1%. That is about the threshold of deaths necessary to reach herd immunity from COVID-19 without a treatment or vaccine. Alabama is about 34,000 deaths from herd immunity. Think of it as about everyone in Prattville dying after which the epidemic will fade.
How many people would need to die in Georgia to reach herd immunity? About 74,370 or the population of Warner Robins. Tennessee? About 47,803 or the population of Smyrna. Texas? 203,000 or the population of Amarillo. Louisiana? 32,543 or the population of Houma.
As a footnote the Spanish Flu nearly caused a Civil War in Switzerland.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/devastation_when-spanish-flu-hit-switzerland/44352910
The story reminds me of the Michigander protests.
In all honesty, please…it was the Fort Riley Flu!
CDC: 37,000 deaths from COVID19
Fake News Media: 66,000 deaths from COVID19
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
This COVID-19 will probably lead to either a world war, following the Spanish flu model, or the total collapse of the USA. “Herd immunity” is just a cope at this point, probably a phrase seeded by zog to get people back to work. There’s no evidence immunity develops to this virus, and it is possible the presence of antibodies actually makes you more susceptible to reinfection (“antibody dependent enhancement”). There’s also the question of how much long lasting organ damage people may suffer from the virus after recovering and what exact health conditions or other factors cause you to get very sick or die in the first place.
There would need to be a lot of money invested into stuff like contact tracing, free spaces for people in crowded homes to isolate, data gathering, medical resources, etc. to reopen America in this situation. But it is completely impossible for America to invest money in this stuff due to the corruption at every level. An expensive public project in America will see 90% of the money go into the hands of cronies and the project would be a laughable embarrassment due to lack of funding and millions will die.
Unfortunately, this is also true if the government attempts to keep the lockdown going for an eradication strategy. To do that would require giving billions of dollars to the American public in the short term, and creating public projects (modernizing infrastructure, etc.) to get the economy going again once the lockdown shows fruit. Obviously such a thing is not possible. The best-case scenario is balkanization by default, where the least-corrupt states start closing their borders and funding their own mitigation and recovery efforts while other states just collapse into riots. But most likely we are going to see a slow and embarrassing crumbling of the entire country and a failed attempt to start a world war.