You’re completely discounting the whole economic shutdown, masking, and social distancing that took place with COVID? Even with that, it was 2.3-5.3 deadlier in your estimation.
With those countermeasures, the flu season last year was “unusually low throughout the 2020-2021 flu season both in the United States and globally, despite high levels of testing … The low level of flu activity during this past season contributed to dramatically fewer flu illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths compared with previous flu seasons. For comparison, during the last three seasons before the pandemic, the proportion of respiratory specimens testing positive for influenza peaked between 26.2% and 30.3%. In terms of hospitalizations, the cumulative rate of laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations in the 2020-2021 season was the lowest recorded since this type of data collection began in 2005. For pediatric deaths, CDC received one report of a pediatric flu death in a child during the 2020–2021 flu season. Since flu deaths in children became nationally notifiable in 2004, reported flu deaths in children had previously ranged from a low of 37 (during 2011-2012) to a high of 199 (during 2019-2020).“
It’s apples to oranges, but I’d take the Flu over COVID. Because we do have natural immunity and we do have better established vaccines for it.
I didn’t even quote the most relevant part - “During September 28, 2020–May 22, 2021 in the United States, 1,675 (0.2%) of 818,939 respiratory specimens tested by U.S. clinical laboratories were positive for an influenza virus”.
0.2% compared to as high as 30%. So we had 150x reduction in the flu’s prevalence last year from distancing measures. Not saying COVID would have been 150x worse than what we experienced, but it would have been far, far worse than the Flu without the mitigation efforts if you want to try to treat them equally. It was objectively much worse than the Flu last year, not even close. The positive test rate in Oklahoma is >50%![1], but to be fair somewhere between 5-10% looks like average across states. Oklahoma may have limited tests available and/or only test severe cases… Or they are somehow better at testing than other places in the country.
With those countermeasures, the flu season last year was “unusually low throughout the 2020-2021 flu season both in the United States and globally, despite high levels of testing … The low level of flu activity during this past season contributed to dramatically fewer flu illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths compared with previous flu seasons. For comparison, during the last three seasons before the pandemic, the proportion of respiratory specimens testing positive for influenza peaked between 26.2% and 30.3%. In terms of hospitalizations, the cumulative rate of laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations in the 2020-2021 season was the lowest recorded since this type of data collection began in 2005. For pediatric deaths, CDC received one report of a pediatric flu death in a child during the 2020–2021 flu season. Since flu deaths in children became nationally notifiable in 2004, reported flu deaths in children had previously ranged from a low of 37 (during 2011-2012) to a high of 199 (during 2019-2020).“
It’s apples to oranges, but I’d take the Flu over COVID. Because we do have natural immunity and we do have better established vaccines for it.
[1] From the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm#...