And the reality is that this virus poses very little risk to most people.
What do you consider risk? Are you only considering death?
Yes, the mortality rate for COVID is moderate, and is highly correlated with age. Unfortunately, morbidity is a completely different animal. Here are some things that might be worth consideration:
People can be contagious, spreading the illness to others, for about a week and a half before they develop any noticeable symptoms. This has two major consequences. First, it means that an infected presymptomatic person can infect a lot of other people that they come into contact with because neither they nor anyone else realizes that they're infectious. Secondly,
it means that the early reports of large volumes of people being asymptomatic were overstated, and that a lot of those people who tested positive and had no symptoms later developed symptoms.
About 20% of symptomatic cases end up admitted to the hospital. Of those admitted, about a third of them end up in ICU with extreme respiratory distress. Unlike the mortality rates, admission rate is a lot less correlated with age. It turns out that the rate of admission varies between about 15% for people between 20 and 45, and about 30% for people over age 65. That's a pretty significant amount of people, especially because symptomatic cases aren't correlated with age (with the exception of children under about 10 or so being very rare to have COVID).
Symptoms for COVID can last a long time. Seasonal flu usually lasts about a week with severe symptoms for only a couple of days. It's rare for flu cases to last closer to two weeks. COVID, on the other hand, frequently has severe symptoms lasting over a week, and lingering symptoms like fatigue and trouble breathing that last three weeks.
For people who are admitted, it's not uncommon for them to be in the hospital for two weeks, ICU admissions are even longer.
There's growing evidence that COVID damages internal organs, especially lungs, in ways that can have long-term effects. It's fairly common to see lung scarring from pneumonia, and COVID does the same thing. Because of the particular way that COVID attacks lung tissue, there's concern that the long-term effects might be worse than for more common forms of pneumonia. There's also suggestions that COVID (or the immune response to it, cytokine storm) damages other internal organs that weren't directly involved in the illness.
One of the most worrisome things, to me, is that
getting and surviving COVID may not make you immune. Most of the strains in the coronavirus family don't confer lasting immunity. The group that is included in the seasonal common cold tend to last for less than a year. I don't recall which is which, but SARS1 and MERS only confer immunity for 18 months and about 3 years IIRC. So even if you get sick, that doesn't mean that you're safe. It's far too early to tell, but it's a definite risk for this family of viruses.
Finally, I think it's important to note that it's not just personal risk that we're talking about. Honestly, I'm not overly concerned about getting COVID myself. It would suck, and it would be expensive, and I definitely don't want to get sick... but odds are that I would survive. But it's not just my health that I put at risk when I go out in the world - it's everyone else's health as well. Infectious diseases end up being a lot like drunk driving and cigarette smoking. The general public doesn't give a damn if you injure yourself if you drive while intoxicated; the public cares about the other people who could be hurt by your negligence. The general public doesn't really care if you get lung cancer from smoking; the public cares a lot if a non-smoker who's been exposed to your second-hand smoke get cancer because of it. It's the same thing with COVID. If all were were talking about was the personal risk to oneself, I think most people would say "go do whatever man, it's your life, your decision. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." Unfortunately, that's not the situation. It's not like you're playing Russian Roulette all by yourself, with only one round in the chamber. It's more like you're playing Russian Roulette with two revolvers, both of which only have one empty chamber, and you're pointing them randomly around a room full of people while you pull the trigger repeatedly.
I feel better now, thank you.