"Massaged data" leaves the door wide open to say I like this one, but not that one, but whatever you also said 27 professionals working on over 100 thousand human ears were all wrong because you pressed on your wife's ear.
Also we don't have a definition of "bad". As in your definition of "bad" may be different than mine, so I am going to go with the breakdown that this is not the flu, and is spreading more rapidly with a higher percentage Case Fatality rate than the Standard Flu, and that the R0 rate is indicative of a healthcare issue that exceeds current medical resource and supply in the US.
This is a very simple breakdown with charts and references:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130 A second source with near identical results:
http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51 A more complex but more thorough breakdown of the metrics I use:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032 Well known and accepted information on the "Standard Flu"
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/symptoms.htmhttps://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm My definition of Case Fatality Death is the number of cumulative deaths divided by the number of cumulative cases at a specific point in time.
Given the numbers presented in all three references above we can estimate that approximately 22,030 deaths were reported worldwide with 1,046 deaths in the U.S., as of Mar. 26, 2020. This includes the cruise ship.
With R0 for standard flu being about 1.3, SARS-CoV-2 is estimated , at this time, to be averaged at 2.5 worldwide. This is more than double the rate of the flu. Comparing the metrics from the 5 references above it doesn't take a genius to calculate that SARS-CoV-2 has a Case Fatality rate 9 to 10 times higher than standard flu. This includes the cruise ship.
This does not mean an end to man.
However humans infected utilize a considerably longer medical center stay in specialized (ICU and similar) care with specialized equipment like ventilators. This does mean that medical centers can not treat US citizens at a rate that is equal to or greater (faster than) the rate of infection. So with the lack of a vaccine, the doubled R0, and the multiplied fatality rate this virus exceeds the means we have to conduct traditional treatment.
Given that we know that SARS-CoV-2 will exceed the volume of care, I feel alternate measures should be taken to reduce impact on the medical care aspect, such as promoting proper hygiene practices and yes social distancing. Reducing the number of people interacting within droplet contamination potential reduces infection rate, that reduces medical need, that reduces Case Fatality rate.
So I consider SARS-CoV-2 to be "bad" because it has proven in multiple locations to overwhelm the specialized care availability and the US has presented zero evidence that there is currently adequate equipment and staffing to exceed the current infection rate.