Now compare to coronavirus, where we were late to start but eventually locked everything down, and we still have 17k deaths in less than a month, and we know that's a lower bound. We're not even a month past the first 100 deaths. The death rate now represents infections 2 weeks ago, which we measured at 14k. After that we started measuring 30k+ new infections daily, so the death rate is likely to get worse by the time we hit 1 month.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
If 100 people drown in lakes, that's not really odd. If 100 people drown in the middle of the Sahara a thousand miles from the nearest water, that's weird.
No, probably not. The seasonal flu infects a billion people a year, and still doesn't do things like collapse Italy's healthcare system.
Well if you mean now now and not just annual totals or totals over the 2019-2020 flu season, they aren't the same or comparable, Covid-19 is the leading US cause of daily death, flu is way back in the pack.