Hey and welcome to Meta @gl1001 
Your assumption is not wrong. It’s very natural for a good site admin - a good host of sorts - to be very aware of things like that.
The question is… is that really what your current users feel?
The simple truth is, users appreciate honesty more than anything.
You can hide the views column with a few lines of CSS like Richard mentioned above. Discourse makes it easy for admins to make such changes if they wish via themes.
That said, you’re trying to build a community, yes?
So, why not embrace the low view/reply count as an indication that something might need to change?
I don’t know anything about your community, but I do know this… the only type of sustainable growth is organic growth. Arbitrary inflated numbers don’t mean much in the long term. There’s only one thing that attracts new users and keeps current users engaged - Good content.
Focus on good content, and the views and replies will increase on their own. It might be a bit slow at the beginning, but this is excellent advice.