The US Centers for Disease control estimated there were approximately 45 millions cases of the flu in the US during the 2017 - 2018 influenza season with 810,000 hospitalizations and 61,000 deaths.
They also estimated "between 291,000 and 646,000 people worldwide die from seasonal influenza-related respiratory illnesses each year."
This flu comparison is getting tiresome. When was the last time flu season massively overwhelmed hospitals all over the world simultaneously?
It is vaguely reminiscent of the Y2K 2000 computer bug. Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits – making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. And there were in fact many problems occurred around the world as the year turned over. Radiation overload and alarms went off in nuclear power plants in Japan, airline baggage collection systems in chaos, transport ticketing systems unable to cope and so on. But planes did not fall out of the sky and no major disasters although there expectations of that happening..
This is a patently ridiculous argument. Y2K did not cause planes to fall out of the sky because herculean efforts were made years prior to prevent that from happening.
In the future, the not so bright will make the argument that all the Covid-19 efforts were an "overreaction" because in the end only 100k or whatever number people died, when in fact many more would have died if it weren't for those efforts.
"We are overreacting because if it looks like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing" - Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases