[msclrhd]

A better comparison would be the yearly death toll due to flu for the US, noting that the current COVID-19 death toll is over a 2-3 month period. Preliminary estimates for the 2019-2020 US flu season [1] put the number of deaths for a 6 month period (Oct 2019-Apr 2020) at 24k-62k, so the COVID-19 attributed deaths are 2x-4x that of flu over half the time (3 months vs 6 months).

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

[rogerkirkness]

All the excess mortality studies seem to settle on around 2x, I think 4x would be some kind of sampling bias.