I don't know what state your are referring to, but its certainly not a hoax in New Jersey. We have over 175,000 confirmed cases in this state and the hospitals have been overflowing and pushed to their limits since March. My wife who is a staff medical practitioner was working six and sometimes seven, long days every week for close to three months before things have recently started to ease up in June. Two of her staff members, both relatively young and healthy. are still recovering from Covid-19 over 5 weeks after being infected. I live in Middlesex County and there have been 17,000 confirmed cases with 1300 deaths here! I personally knew 3 people who died of Covid-19. Two were elderly and one was in his 40s. This is no hoax. This is the frightening reality that 8.5 million people in New Jersey have been living with every day since early March.

The people in states like Florida, Arizona and Texas apparently did not take it seriously because the numbers of infections in those states were much lower than in the NorthEast. They did not wear masks or practice social distancing and are now seeing the results from that behavior as infection rates skyrocket in those states. You indicate correctly that this is costing hospitals millions of dollars. and many sick people with other conditions have been put at far greater risk. That is why it is important for all of us to take this seriously and do all we can to stem the spread of this virus and allow our economy to continue to open safely.

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"Chicken pox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don't think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you're older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don't just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it's been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.
Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they're going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you're going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don't just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it's been around for years, and been studied medically for years.
HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system, and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.
Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.
So far the symptoms may include:
Fever
Fatigue
Coughing
Pneumonia
Chills/Trembling
Acute respiratory distress
Lung damage (potentially permanent)
Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)
Sore throat
Headaches
Difficulty breathing
Mental confusion
Diarrhea
Nausea or vomiting
Loss of appetite
Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)
Swollen eyes
Blood clots
Seizures
Liver damage
Kidney damage
Rash
COVID toes (weird, right?)
People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.
Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.
This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.
For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:
How dare you?
How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as "getting it over with", when literally no one knows who will be the lucky "mild symptoms" case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30 year olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.
How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don't yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:
Frequent hand-washing
Physical distancing
Reduced social/public contact or interaction
Mask wearing
Covering your cough or sneeze
Avoiding touching your face
Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces
The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren't immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.
I reject the notion that it's "just a virus" and we'll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance."

You have a wrong premise. The number of diagnosed cases has no relationship to the number of deaths. Death rates are determined from the total number of exposures. Total exposure to the virus is 40x-50x the number of reported cases, anywhere from 80-120 million people. The death rate from Wuhan then becomes .127%, based on an infection number of 100 million.

The Wuhan virus doesn't kill anyone. Anyone who has died, has succumbed from a cardiovascular, pulmonary, renal, or other body system failure. The largest percentage of deaths is among those over 75, who frequently have compromised immune systems, or preexisting conditions. The smallest number of deaths is those under 25 is 159. If you want to say that Wuhan is an exacerbating factor, you'd be correct.

Dr. Fauci has been all over the map on this, from day one. Every press conference has been something different. Isolation, if anything has exacerbated exposure to Wuhan. Viruses don't do well in the outdoors and sunlight, and that's where folks should have been all along, not inside, spreading the virus to family, etc.

This pandemic has been politicized from the get go.