[ehnto]

Almost 0.1% of the US population has died from COVID so far, coupled with changes in total capacity due to COVID restrictions and changes to how workplaces operate, it's a lot more impactful than a flu wave to business operations.

I feel you are being willfully ignorant, and I have to suggest you look into the severity of COVID and the statistics so far. It's been going on for over a year now, the information is out there.

[jaywalk]

Almost 0.1% of the US population has died with COVID.

[cygx]

Check excess mortality for 2020: ourworldindata.org doesn't have the figures for Dec yet, but we'll end up with something close to 440k additional deaths compared to the average 2015-19.

So 0.1% probably is the correct order of magnitude.

[nonfamous]

If anything, it’s an underestimate. Regular flu deaths are way down for 2020 (masks and social distancing work!), but are included at their normal rate in the baseline for excess mortality.

Same applies at smaller scale for other factors in baseline mortality, like traffic deaths and industrial accidents, that have also been suppressed by policy and behavior changes due to the pandemic.