Misinformation has been due mostly to the lack of reliable data, which start appearing just now, showing the real under-reporting rate both for asymptomatics and for deaths.I think several millions is a very far stretch. The death tolls are wildly disproportionate when comparing deaths from different countries. Misinformation is causing the most damage to everyone's lives now
see here from some data relative to the most affected provinces of North Italy:
COVID-19 in Italy: An analysis of death registry data | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal
The mortality ratio, before the lockdown measured managed to slow down the virus spreading, raised to more than three times the normal mortality averaged over the 5 previous years:
Without the lockdown the curve had continued to increase much further, in Bergamo (where lockdown was delayed a couple of weeks) it reached a local maximum of 8 times the normal mortality rate, and with no control it is not difficult to predict that it could have easily reached a factor of 10.
Every year in Italy we have more or less 650.000 deaths, approximately 54.000 per month.
If Covid-19 has been left running without control for two months and affected the whole Italy, the number of deaths could have been 540.000/month, hence 1 million deaths in 2 months. This just for Italy...
Of course this is a worst case scenario, and luckily, thanks to the severe lock down, now we have "just" 33.000 deaths (officially, which means 60.000 really, as the article cited shows clearly that we are under-reporting a lot of deaths)...
Already too much, in my opinion, and well enough for justifying the severe lockdown we had suffered.