You make some very good points. But you too, unfortunately, succumb to absolutism. For example...
"This kind of crap has happened over and over and over again. Virus/flu outbreak begins. Nobody does anything. Impact is greater than it should have been. Why don't we just TRY once to take precautions and minimize the problem?"
"Nobody does anything", huh? How about H2N2, MERS, SARS, Ebola? All were packaged by the media in similar hysteria of how they would devastate the global population. None ultimately did. So why in your view is it "nobody does anything" and "why can't we just TRY for once to take precautions"? Seems to me you're presenting a distorted reality.
And then you state:
"If the trade-off is "let's have 2 crappy weeks of no sports" for "coronavirus never reached the projected impact numbers", then all sides should view it as a victory."
Sure, if that was the entirety of this in a vacuum I can't imagine there is anyone who would disagree with that statement. But what about this slightly modified and in my opinion more accurate statement:
"If the trade-off is "let's have 2 crappy weeks of no sports" and our economy absolutely devastated for "coronavirus never reached the projected impact numbers", then all sides should view it as a victory."
I'm not sure one would view that as the same level of "victory", especially if that person feels the response to coronavirus has been grossly disproportionate to the threat.
Look, there is no "absolutism" there.
First, it is uncontroverted that we have cut the funding for the CDC, and that we were not (previously) using WHO-approved testing kits, etc. There is a difference between some of the diseases you cite (Ebola), which was LARGELY contained on one continent. We were not seeing thousands of cases breaking out across the globe.
Here's just one Ebola stat: "Between 1976 and 2013, the
World Health Organization reports 24 outbreaks involving
2,387 cases with 1,590 deaths. "
Compare that to Coronavirus: "As of 12 March 2020, over 129,000 cases have been confirmed in more than 120 countries and territories, with major outbreaks in
mainland China,
Italy,
South Korea, and
Iran. More than 4,700 have died from the disease and 68,000 have recovered."
So even though Ebola has a horrific impact, it has not infected and/or killed as many people IN THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS as we are seeing with Coronavirus.
Now, that comparison alone is not the end-all/be-all on which disease is "better" or "worse" or "deserving of hype/overreaction".
Ebola has long been feared because of the horrible way in which infected people die. But not because of its overall statistical impact. ****, shark attacks are rare too, but people are still fearful of sharks and cautious around sharks.
As for the "economic impact" argument, sorry, but we also have a long history of "well, let's not do anything, because it's bad for the economy". Particularly on environmental/pollution problems. But time and time again, it has been shown that the "cleanup" of, say, toxic waste sites, is far more expensive than what it would have cost to have prevented the problem in the first place.
Will the economic impact of Coronavirus suck? Sure. But maybe in the future, politicians of BOTH parties will not be so quick to cut the CDC funding. Maybe this will impact awareness and our standards of what we tolerate and choose not to tolerate.
Remember when someone poisoned Tylenol bottles and a couple of people died? We have since instituted safety-sealed medicine bottles, and we never went back to the old container methods.
What is YOUR alternative? Continue to stage all of the athletic competitions, continue to live life as normal (because, you know, "the economy") and then allow whatever number of people to die as are going to die? Because they are old and/or immunocompromised?
Yeah, this one is going to sting. It could have been handled much better. But it's silly to blame "the media" for (belated) reporting.
If the economy tanks, will it help us to take "precautions" warnings more seriously in the future? Will it cut down on the "breast cancer kills more people than Coronavirus" crowd lulling people into inaction? Because those could be two positive future developments.