WHO: (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(...) Worldwide, flu causes 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths. Worldometer reports 316,000 COVID19 deaths. Since January. And I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that is off on the low side. But it's still early.
Not quite. The first death in the US was Feb 29. On March 31, it was only 5151.
So ~91k deaths over 2.5 months, or ~86k deaths over 1.5 months. (...I'd probably go with the first just to encompass infection time)
Many doctors think there's actually an undercount as they discover ways in which the disease can present differently than severe respiratory distress, or look at guidelines that may have led to incorrectly ruling out a case.
Of course, be sure to save some of that skepticism for ways in which a fee-for-service medical system can bend treatment large and small when this is all over.