There’s a more accurate way to compare coronavirus deaths to the flu

To get a more accurate comparison, one must start with the number of directly confirmed flu deaths, which the CDC tracks on an annual basis. In the past seven flu seasons, going back to 2013, that tally fluctuated between 3,448 and 15,620 deaths.

Note that these numbers are very different from the CDC’s final official flu death estimates. For 2018-2019, for instance, the 7,172 confirmed flu deaths translated to a final estimate of between 26,339 and 52,664 deaths. Again, that’s because the CDC plugs the confirmed deaths into a model that attempts to adjust for what many epidemiologists believe is a severe undercount.

Now, let’s add a bar for this season’s covid-19 deaths, which as of this writing stands at 63,259, and which will be even higher by the time you read this. Note the drastic change in the y-axis to accommodate the scale of covid-19 mortality.