Where are all the "COVID is not worse than Flu" people now?

Without naming and shaming anybody, one thing that has happened over the last few months/weeks, is that certain people that I know have been finding any opportunity to discount the severity of the virus, most of the time, it's something along the lines of "COVID-19 death rate is not as high as the flu."

Of course, those people quickly turned into the "COVID-19 is not worse than the flu," and then when it was worse, they became "COVID-19 is only as bad as the worst flu season in history."

I really wonder what it is these people get out of being skeptics. Being deniers of something so plain to see, it as if they have some kind of agenda, or built up angst that disavows their judgement of very real facts. Maybe it's just disgruntled people locked down for a couple months yearning for freedom?

But now as the US approaches 80,000 deaths, unless we some how magically have no further deaths, they have nothing to say. The worst flu season ever, which lasted 6 months had a death toll of 80,000. By all estimates, COVID is going to be much much higher, even with the social distancing, even with the shelter-at-home orders, and only after 2 months.

Even with simple deduction, we can see that COVID-19 is atleast 2x as lethal as a bad flu season, and 1.5x as lethal as the worst flu season. But we mustn't forget, that these are based on "confirmed deaths."

If the way deaths were counted (they're not currently) were standardised across flu, then they'd actually be nearer 15,000 flu deaths. At nearly 80,000 COVID deaths, that's literally 5x worse.

We might have begun to flatten the curve, but with easing of lockdowns coming into effect across the country, a second wave is almost imminent. We have a long way to go before getting a vaccine so expect way more deaths to come. It makes me sad to say that I thought we'd have 100,000 deaths in total, and that was the worst case scenario. But with the way things are going, it looks like we'll be way past that by mid summer.

Don't be hysterical and practice good safety.