It still bemuses me why everyone's losing their heads over this.
CDC stats for US regular flu cases last decade:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html2010-11: 37 k deaths in 10 mil medical visits.
2011-12: 12 k deaths in 4.3 mil visits.
2012-13: 43 k deaths in 16 mil visits.
2013-14: 38 k deaths in 13 mil visits.
2014-15: 51 k deaths in 14 mil visits.
2015-16: 23 k deaths in 11 mil visits.
2016-17: 38 k deaths in 14 mil visits.
2017-18: 61 k deaths in 21 mil visits.
2018-19: 34 k deaths in 16.5 mil visits.
By using the medical visits number this is the closest comparison one can have to the Corona virus. By looking at people hospitalized instead, standard mortality rate was like this:
2010-11: 12.8 %
2011-12: 8.6 %
2012-13: 7.5 %
2013-14: 10.9 %
2014-15: 8.6 %
2015-16: 8.2 %
2016-17: 7.6 %
2017-18: 7.5 %
2018-19: 7.0 %
Those numbers are rather higher, but only because regular flu is not considered something usually requiring hospitalization. Since precautions are currently taken, everyone is admitted to isolation or hospitalization, which skews numbers, but among people who actually need care, I struggle to see mortality rates as in grave cases being higher than these numbers.
In nine years, that means that 337 k US residents died because of regular flu and it affected a vastly higher proportion of the populace than this has done even in Hubei. Sure, mortality numbers per capita were lower, but based on this, people need to take a chill pill unless they are elder citizens or have serious underlying medical issues already. The worst year saw 1 in 500 Americans succumb to the flu. When breaking down the numbers over many millions of people suddenly it looks a lot scarier than it's been.