Also Influenza is not a novel virus, so if 40k people die of Influenza this year, doesn't mean that it couldn't have killed more people, because in fact, there was another 40k who died the year before and therefore don't die again, and another 40k who died 2 years ago, etc.

Basically Influenza is endemic and the deaths are evenly distributed over long periods of time, whereas a novel virus will obviously have a huge initial death count in year 1, but subsequent years will see equally many less deaths logically.