I am afraid that is not how it works, and perhaps this is what is meant by media frenzy feeding misinformation. For one thing, the virus does not have a fatality rate, it is the disease COVID-19 that has a case fatality rate. (This is akin to AIDS being the disease, which kills you, while HIV is the virus).
Case fatality rate of COVID-19 is not just the reported cases. It is the reported cases plus the unreported cases plus the asymptomatic cases (the latter two are far more and far more difficult to assess). When you add up all those against actual deaths you will see the percentage slipping lower and lower and lower.
Second, you want to look at the rate of duplication or spread (how quickly it is spread from one person to another and the days it takes to manifest in the person it is transmitted to) ... This is a slow-moving and less deadly virus in comparison to a number of other virsuses but still it is contagious and in the extreme density of an unprepared and undisciplined NYC you should see high number of cases (we are at almost 50% of all cases of US in a very small geographic area).
When all is said and done this entire virus/disease episode will generate less cases and less case fatalities than even h1n1 ... and guess what it is almost over
Replace the word "Coronavirus" with the word "Covid-19" to fix that issue (my understanding was that covid-19 was a type of coronavirus, rather than the AIDS/HIV reference you used, but I've been wrong before).
According to the WHO, coronavirus has a serial interval if 5-6 days compared to the regular flu at 3 days, but it is believed to have a higher rate of secondary infections (roughly 2-2.5). The case mortality ratio was 3-4% as of 3/6 (old numbers, but all i found in a quick search from the WHO)
The CDC and the Chinese government's most recent numbers estimate a 2.3% CFR (case fatality rate). This is much higher than that of the seasonal flu in the US (.1%). While that number would be expected to drop if all infections were known, there is also the variable that this far, deaths have occurred between 2-8 weeks after symptoms have first appeared, meaning the death count is not accurate yet for CFR's purposes, either.
You are correct, there is no way to know the true IFR (infected fatality rate) until this is over, but most estimates seem to expect it to settle around 1-1.5%.
To play it off that this is nothing seems ignorant to me. But let's hope you're right.