If you look up "COVID-19 R0" you'll get a number between 2 and 2.8 (although LANL calculated 4.7-6.6 based on cell-phone data). If you look up "influenza R0" you'll get a number between 1 and 1.3. If you look up "influenza mortality rate" you'll get about 20 per 100k or about 0.02%. If you look up "COVID-19 mortality rate" you'll get around 2%. That was a week ago, though - my read of the tea leaves is that COVID-19 is more transmissive than 2.2 but substantially less lethal than 2%. However, I'm a guy on the internet with a theory, not an epidemiologist. Nonetheless, we're still probably looking at a particularly nasty flu season.
Thanks, kleinbl00! You're the man as always... admittedly I was telling my father what you had posted in the earlier post 6 days ago, and wanted to provide sources if he asked. If you had to wager a "guesstimate" of the total # dead at the end of this from COVID-19, where would you land?
I would start by pointing out that last year the flu caused a million hospitalizations and 61,000 deaths. I think any figures we get are going to be simultaneously overrepresented (the New York Times doesn't make your phone buzz every time someone dies of the flu) and undercounted (if the asymptomatic rate for COVID-19 is really 50% or higher, than it's going to be a lot more prevalent than we're expecting). Presume, though, that COVID-19 has a morbidity rate of "the flu" or 0.02%. Presume 70% of the world is going to get it. That's still a million dead.