A large number of social media pontificators have been making various claims that COVID-19 pandemic is in some ways related to the seasonal flu. One of the arguments made in this context is that the pandemic-related deaths are similar to those produced by a seasonal flu and therefore do not warrant drastic measures deployed by the governments around the world.
Setting this argument to rest, the NY Times have published this analysis: https://twitter.com/sangerkatz/status/1248685404775239680?s=20 with an associated chart:
Others make an argument that people dying from COVID-19 are somehow the same people who would have died from a different condition anyway, without the virus pandemic.
Given the levels of utilization of hospital beds in countries like France, Italy, the UK, and the U.S., and in fact across the entire range of advanced economies, it is hard to imagine how anything about the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered at even remotely related to 'normal' or 'seasonal'.
