As of today, the tally of COVID-19 deaths in America sits around 70,000. That’s an awfully high number, but there are still many misguided people who believe the reaction has all been overblown, and that this virus is no worse than the flu. A major cause of that incorrect thinking is how flu deaths are counted, an issue Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust is working to correct:

If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second full week of April to the number of people who died from influenza during the worst week of the past seven flu seasons (as reported to the CDC), we find that the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu. In other words, the coronavirus is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.

Even with the incredible restrictions we’re experiencing during quarantine, COVID-19 is killing many, many more people than the seasonal flu.