Table 1 from the CDC report you linked indicates deaths at 61,000 for the year in question. We’re 50% past that in just three months, and that’s with the preventative measures we’ve taken to date.

I suppose that it’s relatively easy to point to 91,000 people dead and equate that to a similar number of flu deaths, but official CDC estimates (which we’ll roll with since you seem to like their numbers) indicated that in the US we could have been well into a quarter of a million dead by now had we done nothing.

But that’s simply an estimate and that’s the problem, isn’t it? We took rather dramatic preventative measures to “flatten the curve” and as such we’re “only” at 91,000 deaths to date, with no real way to know just how bad it might have been.

And which, I suppose, makes it easier for some to argue that we “overreacted”. Then again, my wife works at UNMC and the doctors there were worried sick that they’d be forced to choose who lives and who dies and who to treat and who to turn away.