What most governments around the world are saying is that the best way to mitigate this is to slow the spread now, in hopes of two of three things: 1) a vaccine, 2) widespread, easily accessible testing, and 3) a cure or palliatives to reduce the lung/oxygen flow part of the disease. You probably need two of three.

A vaccine is maybe 12 months away, although most are hedging out to 18 months minimum; a cure or palliatives could be a few months away if certain morons get out of the way and stop enticing people to straight inject themselves with disinfectant or create shortages of medicines for people who actually need them right now; and widespread, easily accessible testing should have been available a month ago, if the initial response hadn't been so thoroughly botched.

We need two of those three things before we can just throw open the doors.

Obviously COVID is not flu, because flu has an annual vaccine, its fatality rate now appears to be much lower than COVID, and it's easy to test for flu. When COVID is like this, then and only then can you say "COVID is like flu."