The sooner we take extreme measures to deal with COVID-19, the sooner it'll be over. In US/Euro/1st world countries people really don't want to disrupt commerce until they absolutely have to so these things tend to linger longer than say China, who basically nuked it with draconian measures.
It shouldn't take more than 5-10 seconds to realize why a comparison to the flu is deeply flawed. If we keep the status quo, it will spread exponentially due to lack of symptoms in the newly afflicted.