You can perform the same exact calculations over the numbers in Sweden, where there were no mask mandates and no shut downs and no school cancellations and they had the exact same epidemic curve as the UK. In fact they did better than the UK on a per capita basis. Like the UK, Sweden had huge outbreaks in vulnerable populations which occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Once they got those outbreaks under control, their death rates plummeted. So two countries with vastly different approaches had the same outcome. That underscores the fact that Covid is more infectious than the flu and can spread more rapidly.

The virus is getting less deadly. You can have many hypotheses for why that is: better treatments, younger patients, viral mutations, or just better testing which is giving us a clearer picture of the actual threat.

But you can't deny that YTD, the data does not show a disease that is anywhere close to 10-12x the flu. The fact that the flu has already surpassed Covid in monthly deaths (despite being less infectious) by the month of August at a rate of 4x Covid should tell you something, and we're not even in peak flu season yet.

Like others have mentioned, if this disease is capable of spreading much more rapidly than the flu, then it may knock out many of the same people who would have been vulnerable to the flu in a subsequent year. It may be that better treatments cause the death rate to continue to plummet. Is it fair to compare a disease we have been fighting for thousands of years to a novel virus we had no idea about 8 months ago? Probably not. As best practices and treatments get established it may very well turn out that Covid remains less deadly than the flu in perpetuity.