Good post. This virus is as or more transmissible than influenza and has a mortality rate roughly 10-20X that of influenza (~2% vs. about 0.1-0.2%). So if we largely ignored it like the flu, we'd potentially have 10-20X the ~12K-60K deaths/year we have from the flu, which would give a range of deaths of 120K to 1.2MM if we did nothing.
That's why this is so serious and doing everything possible to slow/stop the spread is so important, from not allowing travel from countries with outbreaks, to very close monitoring of people who have been in high rate countries, to quarantining/monitoring/treating suspected cases here (and tracking connections), along with personal preventative measures like frequent hand-washing and wearing masks if you are symptomatic.
Only these measures will be effective in significantly lowering "effective" transmission rates to well below those seen for influenza, which will lead to far less deaths than there could be. The other thing we could have on our side is the possibility that transmission rates will decline significantly soon, as we transition to warmer/more humid spring weather, as occurs for influenza, but we don't know yet if that will be the case with this coronavirus.