I forgot one thing that seems to be missed with the line "most everyone will survive". How long it takes to recover.
This is clearly tougher to deal with than the flu- it's much harder on the body, takes a long time to get over, and uses a lot more resources to get through it. Even with a small percentage of the public dealing with it, there will be a significant economic impact if enough people get sick. We've already seen plants being forced to shut down, we know that lack of productivity being sick is hard on the economy, and we know this is worse than the flu even ignoring deaths.
So by not controlling it harshly and quickly, the long term economic impact will certainly be worse than if we did a lock down (which is the economy running at ~70% for a short time). Let alone the impact on certain industries- like tourism- a large amount of tourists (including us) will not be going to Florida to spend money any time soon. Again, I really wonder about the tourist industry in Florida- why their donors have not convinced the government to do a LOT more. And even Delta needs to do more- part of the reason we didn't go to Puerto Rico two weeks ago was the need to stop in Georgia.
The longer this drags on, the worse it is to some really large companies, because a significant part of the population bothers to think and conclude based on data that is being supplied by state governments.