Great article for all you panickers and case counters, hopefully put things into a bit of perspective for you.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500000-covid19-math-mistake-panic/
I don't think anyone ever really doubted that the true death rate would be much lower than estimated at the start because this happens all the time with these outbreaks. You only see the worst cases up front and discover as you go along how many are asymptomatic. It is why the WHO echoed test test test almost from day one as until you do in big numbers you never get a true perspective on who actually gets a disease but never needs to trouble the health care system.
It happened 10 years ago when we had an outbreak of something. It seemed more deadly as most cases were never really recorded. I almost certainly had that one as I recall being very ill for a few days but struggled on as I had commitments and got better. So I never got counted and only much later when they collated data about the numbers who did have it was it apparent that it was far less virulent because most data came from a small number of cases. And many more had it without ever knowing even years later that they had.
Exactly the same will be true of Covid. This was seen relatively soon as the death rates were all over the place in different countries and I recall talking to my friend in the US as her son was an ER doctor in the thick of it in Seattle. My friend could not understand why the death rate looked so much higher in the UK (around 10%) and I kept saying its not but it looks to be because we only test the really sick and so they are more likely to die and not the ones who have it who mostly just stay home and get better. The majority of whom were never tested.
As I recall the 3% death rate appearing by averaging stuff out was never thought by most scientists to be accurate and WHO quite early said it would be sub 1%. And it will likely as most of these things end up being even lower when we can tally the numbers.
But the lockdown was a precaution that was necessary as you do not gamble everything on thousands of human lives and its main purpose was in any case to stop the spread as the infectivity of Covid was the biggest problem not its death rate. Unlike many viruses it is worst at a point when the person passing it on to you neither knows they are sick or even looks sick to you. So without isolation it spreads very easily.
That was a big reason why lockdown happened to stop the invisible infected from infecting others until we understood more about what was happening.
Covid is not like the Walking Dead where it is obvious when someone has that bug. It had to be treated differently
