> Globally, the 1957 flu caused about 1M excess deaths. Currently, Covid is attributed to ~2M deaths
No, this is a disingenuous apples-to-oranges comparison. One is a post-epidemic estimate by independent epidemiologists, while the other is a confirmed-positive-death count subject to contemporaneous political pressure and institutional inability to confirm every Covid death.
The contemporaneous confirmed death numbers from any seasonal or pandemic flu are always many times lower than the final estimate, and decades ago it was probably at least an order of magnitude lower. The discrepancy won't be quite as dramatic with Covid today, because a tremendous effort has been made around the world to get Covid tests to hospitals. But it will still be a very significant undercount.
After a couple years once experts have had time to gather and crunch the numbers, the number of Covid deaths from a comparable kind of best-guess estimate is going to double or more. Even in the USA, we are probably missing on the order of 150–200k Covid deaths so far from our confirmed death counts. And the situation is broadly comparable in Europe. But many less developed countries have much less capacity for gathering and reporting accurate numbers, and only a tiny fraction of Covid deaths are being reported in many places.
> One is a post-epidemic estimate by independent epidemiologists, while the other is a confirmed-positive-death count subject to contemporaneous political pressure and institutional inability to confirm every Covid death.
...as well as almost certain over-counting due to extremely liberal criteria for "Covid deaths" (e.g. deaths within 30 days of a positive test, which is the standard in many areas.)
Point being: there's uncertainty on the "confirmed-positive death count" in both directions and you're assuming that it's a strict lower bound.
Just today, the WSJ published an excess-death study that put the number at 2.8M, worldwide (or 3.5/10,000):
Higher than the JHU numbers, but still within reasonable statistical error of the 1957 pandemic estimates.
> After a couple years once experts have had time to gather and crunch the numbers, the number of Covid deaths from a comparable kind of best-guess estimate is going to double or more. Even in the USA, we are probably missing on the order of 150–200k Covid deaths so far from our confirmed death counts.
Well, now you're just making things up. Also, again: see the WSJ study above. Even if you count every excess death this year as Covid...it's about the same as the 1957 flu season.
And if you don't cherry-pick which country you cite...
Globally, the 1957 flu caused about 1M excess deaths:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4747626/
Currently, Covid is attributed to ~2M deaths:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/
World population in 1957-58: about 2.9 billion people.
Current world population: 7.8 billion people.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-populat...
1957 flu mortality: 1,000,000 / 2,900,000,000 = 3 / 10,000
Covid-19 mortality: 2,000,000 / 7,800,000,000 = 2.6 / 10,000
...they're about the same. Mortality varies dramatically from country to country in both pandemics.