In looking at the available statistics I am focusing on South Korea. They are testing a lot of people. It's hard to focus on fatality rate because so many cases are still active. However, what we can look at is the rate of serious/critical cases in the active/known case population.
In South Korea, it is currently 0.88%. Worldwide the rate is 16.32%.
The worldwide rate is what is causing the panic. However, South Korea doing so much more testing is finding many more of the mild or asymptomatic cases.
If the South Korea number is the real number then it puts the serious illnesses rate of COVID-19 on basically the same level as the flu. If that is the case then all of the extreme containment measures are unnecessary assuming it is similarly contagious. I don't there is enough data to determine how contagious it is compared to the flu.
If the infection rate and real mortality rate are similar to the flu then it is absolutely insane to cause the fear, panic and economic disruption that is associated with this. While it would be "sad" to double the flu related deaths due to essentially having a second flu outbreak, it isn't justifiable to take the actions being and create the fear and economic damage that have been created.
It is quite possible that more people die of hunger from the economic damage than would die if COVID-19 was just allowed to spread rampantly around the globe.
I'm basing all of the opinions in this post on the numbers out of South Korea. They are an advanced society with high quality medical care that is seemingly doing far more testing than any other country as a percentage of the population.
Mortality rate will also vary according to demographic. Italy, for example, has a higher percentage of older people than SK, therefore making more people susceptible to covid complications. Meanwhile, China not only had a lot of poluted air, but also a population with a lot of smokers (I have around 50% of men smoking in mind but can't recall source), again making their population more susceptible.
Also, there's the quality/quantity of medical service and illness culture.
Quality/quantity of medical service: how good a countries medical team is and how much is there. Another reason why the death toll in China is so bad is that because they had too much cases (because they didn't take it seriously early enough), they didn't have enough medical staff and facilities to treat everyone, thus resulting in a bigger death toll from those that might have been saved had they received appropriate medical help. Because SK is testing everyone they can get their hands on, they're able to cull and medicate people before they've reached dire symptoms, so their medical services are yet not overrun (last I heard)
And finally, seeking illness culture: in a country where people are more prone to going to the doctor for any small thing than grabbing a doctor's note to stay at home during it, it's more likely to come out that someone has the virus earlier on and resulting in less spread than somewhere there's a culture of self medicating and going to work.
TO SUMMARIZE: while the death rate in South Korea is a good thing and people shouldn't be setting up for the end of the world, culture has an impact on that rate and doing as China did - only doing anything after
thousands were impacted- is not a good move.