Maybe it will kill tens of thousands, maybe it won't. Depends entirely on how it spreads through other countries. I still stand by my original argument. Looking at the numbers, it's killed a little over *only* 3,000 people, the mortality rate is low among healthy adults, few children seem to get it, and there are lots of resources being spent on finding a vaccine. I think we are looking at a serious, but relatively short-term problem. Once there is a vaccine that is tested and available to the public, no one will be talking about this. So it's still the case that cancer and heart disease kill far more people than the CV ever will. Not just this year, every year in the future until he's cured. The NIH annual budget for aging, something that affects literally everyone on the planet is about 1/3 of the money allocated in the US to the CV (https://www.nia.nih.gov/about/budget/fy-2020-justification-budget-request/fy-2020-directors-overview). And unlike the CV, if you're in good health, you have a good chance of survival. But many people in good health have gotten cancer and has become a matter of time until they die from it. I'd much rather have CV than any form of cancer. Here's one guy's account of his experience with the CV:
So again I go back to holding you to making rational arguments. If you can show that an additional dollar spent on cancer research will save more lives then one spent on coronavirus you'd be making a decent argument. Cancer's damn hard and the effectiveness of research doesn't move linearly with extra dollars spent. This is very bounded, it's communicable, and certainly when starting from $0 spent an additional dollar spent on preventing spread and speeding a vaccine should provide far more in prevented death than putting that dollar toward cancer. I'm not sure of the marginal dollar answer and could be wrong, but at least I'm going down a rational path of making the decision. "We shouldn't worry about/spend money on X because there's this other thing Y that kills more people" is simply not a rational argument. The mere presence of Y is completely irrelevant to what we should do about X, and you have done nothing to tie Y to X except I guess that they're both diseases.
I'm not claiming to ignore a problem simply because there's a bigger problem, even with much more catastrophic scope and long-term impact. But when you say: "Cancer's damn hard and the effectiveness of research doesn't move linearly with extra dollars spent." It is hard, but progress has been made with cancer. Not as much progress as any of us would like, but appreciate that survival rates have improved with better treatment. I'll throw down the same claim. Show that past $4B spent on this virus, the additional $4B provided greater benefit than the last $4B spent on cancer. No one can back up that claim. Like your 9/11 and mass shooter example, my argument is simply that $8B was not needed. Just doing common-sense things like washing hands, avoiding hand rails, and not touching your face does not cost any money. Taking care of oneself -- eating right, getting a good amount of sleep, maybe taking Vitamin C are things people should be doing anyway. Again, no cost. In addition to that, add some other measure to prevent the spread since we know there is currently higher risk -- avoid spending time in public places, avoid public transportation, work from home as much as possible, get some fresh air, and minimize exposure to other people as much as possible for a while. None of that costs any money.
And that's a perfectly rational argument to make. Like I said, I don't know the impact of a marginal dollar spend on this virus versus a marginal dollar spent on cancer and I'm certain intelligent well meaning people can disagree on that. However it's a completely legitimate topic to debate. And a completely different argument then any along the lines of "this has only killed X people........... when flu/heart disease/accidents kill Y people per year" which is mainly what's being bandied about. I'll take it we now agree on that.
Chiropractors aren't real doctors What gave it away you ask? No doctor would make the stupid argument of different causes of death in the USA, then shift to world statistics on respiratory illnesses to try to drive some point home.