I think the idea that any "statistic" is vaild at this incredibly early point in the outbreak, with such limited testing having been done, is just ignorant. Here are the facts as I know them: Europe started seeing high levels of this virus two weeks ago. Testing is still not widespread. Their hospital systems are being overrun already, and the people overrunning them are not all dying.
In the US only a small number of people have been tested. The numbers of positives that are growing everyday are not a sign of the expansion of the virus (necessarily) but an indication of how many more people had been tested 2-5 days ago.
So...
Until testing is truly ramped up, and everyone who even is worried about having the virus can get a go / no go, we will not have a broad enough data set to truly determine infection rates, death rates, age demographics, full recovery rates, long term health impacts, etc.
My second point is that this is not a simple calculation that is cost of economy vs number of deaths. The reason cities are shutting down is to limit the strain on the healthcare system and allow testing, manufacturing, headcount, and knowledge to catch up. If it was a simply question of trading the US economy not dipping into depression vs 55K old people, then the economy will win, but its not. The number of potential deaths across demographics is simply unknown, and more importantly the strain that is put on the healthcare system that leads to increased deaths from other issues, as well as long term health impacts to both covid 19 and all other patients, is unknown.
If we shut down for weeks to let the data, the healthcare manufacturers, the doctors, the hospitals and our governments catch up, this could be a short lived (painful) blip. If we go back to treating every day as business as usual the effects (while truly unknown) can drag out for up to 18 months (if a vaccine can be found to be effective).
It is very scary to see the economic impact. It is also very scary to walk outside or go to the grocery store, not knowing if your catching a virus that could never show up and allow you to infect your friends and family, or show up and put you in the hospital, or show up and kill you and then your family. That stress is making every day feel long and hard. We need to all realize we are very very early in this outbreak, especially in the US. We need better data to understand what is truly happening, and that data wont be worth anything until we have more testing. Without that data, making sweeping life altering decisions, seems irresponsible, at least to me.
Stay home if you can. Wait this out, once we get real data, you can start to understand who on your block or in your company or in your family has the virus and then we will know how to proceed with how to reintegrate our society, safely.