Some good points, Bernard.
One thing about flu season in the US (it's different for the southern hemisphere) is that it stretches across four prime months (December through March) and is also active to a lesser degree in October and November. So if the average flu season kills around 38,000 people in the US, that'd amount to around 8,000 or so a month during the heavy months, with a few thousand more in October and November. Covid-19 has killed more than 10,000 here between March 8 and today (April 6.) So it's clear that it's killing more than the flu. Furthermore, it hasn't nearly peaked. It may be near a peak or plateau in New York, which may last for a while before starting to decline, but we have to remember than an apex, or plateau, isn't the end of the pandemic -- if you consider a bell curve, at any equal point on the curve on either side the peak, you're killing as many people on the way down as on the way up. So if today was the peak in NY, with 3,000 dead, we're likely to kill just as many on the back side of the cure -- another 3,000.
Further, in the US, the epidemic appears to be crossing the country in a kind of tide, from both coasts toward the middle, so I don't believe we're anywhere near the peak between the two coastal ranges. Unfortunately, that's the area where there's been most resistance to shutting down, and we're likely to suffer a severe toll there.
The current best guess (from U. of Washington) is a death toll in the high 80s if we continue the shutdown through August 1. I'm already starting to see cracks in the shutdown; I suspect Trump will get his wish and we'll try to open in May and will get another large wave in July and August, and then we'll close again, and then he'll try to open again before the election, and that will start another wave. Unlike the flu, the scary thing about this virus is that you can't really protect yourself -- I get a flu vaccine every September, and haven't had the flu since sometime in the 90s. About 50% of Americans do get flu vaccine, so there is some level of herd immunity, which we won't have with Covid-19. It'll just keep coming in waves. One thing that could stop an opening is the potential for a terrible death toll in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, all of which resisted the shutdown, and are now suffering for it. That's the heart of Trump country, and if they start coming apart, then we might push the shutdown into late summer. Trump's numbers are already starting to fall in Florida, now his home state, so maybe the chickens are coming home to roost.
