From the start the main thing that has been scary about this whole deal has been the way the Chinese were apparently willing to cripple their economy over it. Of course, they could mean anything. Local officials in totalitarian places like China tend to under react to problems then massively overreact in compensation for their previous under reactions. Who knows exactly.
A two percent fatality rate would be pretty severe in sheer numbers of deaths and it would be a pretty serious deal if this thing is as contagious as it appears, but it would not be a societal changing event. We live with far greater risks everyday in all sorts of activities.
Yes, China's reaction was very odd, dangerously so. Something more than they have told us was going on. My speculation is that they thought it was a bioweapons lab escapee designed to kill off mass swaths of their enemy--but got into their own people instead. They calculated that without massive overreaction they would kill too many of their own population to remain viable as a superpower.
