I was listening in to a conversation between two co-workers today.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

36. You're right about the health experts, or at least some of them.

Others have said that while it seems to have a higher death rate than regular flu, it's not really so far out there.

There's also a bit of a problem of the boy who cried wolf. The drumbeat of "The next flu season could be as bad as 1918" has been in the air for several decades now. I honestly think that in first world countries at least, a comparably lethal flu still wouldn't be as awful given improvements in things like indoor plumbing.

And of course, the biggest thing with the 1918 flu is that it struck down young adults the way it did. That's the big anomaly. But again, to keep numbers in perspective, this country's population back then was about 105 million people. From what I find on line, about 28 million are believed to have gotten sick, and about 675,000 died. My little calculator says that's about 2.4% of those who got it, and about six tenths of one percent of the entire population. Not to trivialize those numbers, far more people didn't get it than did, and far more survived than died.

Oh, and that 2.4% is real close to what the current published death rate for the corona virus is.