To compare past years flu numbers to covid 19 numbers isn't accurate. We don't quarantine and lock down for the flu. To make a fair comparison We would need to go through an entire season with covid 19 while still going to sporting events and school and church and whatever just living normal life and taking no precautions and then see what those covid numbers would be compared to a full flu season.
China put all affected areas in lock down (much more strict than here) on Jan 23 over 2 months ago to get their numbers under control. If not for any lock down they would be at unreal numbers by now.
In Italy the number of deaths has been doubling approximately every 3 days. That's doubled 5 times since march 9th the day they went into lock down. They are at 7503 total deaths now. They have had more than 1 death for every 10 confirmed cases. They have been locked down since march 9th and the infection rate has started to slow the last couple of days. If they hadn't locked down or done anything and that rate continued, it would only need to double 7 more times to get to 1 million.
Here in the US, our death numbers have doubled closer to every 2 1/2 days since march 15th. we are at 1027 deaths as of now. so we have doubled more than 4 times in 10 days. We are at 1027 deaths now and if we double that 10 more times that would be 1 million. After that 10 more times doubled would be 1 billion.
I'm not saying the numbers would ever get close to that high, but had we done nothing to slow this and every body was living life as normal, things would likely get pretty bad. Our gradual shutdown started with the NBA march 11 and stronger measures the past week should start to have a big effect soon compared to what it would have been with no action.
Our total death numbers are only about 1/5 of Italy's but our recovery numbers are only 619 compared to 10,361 recovered in Italy despite having nearly the same total number of cases. That is because the majority of cases in the US haven't been sick long enough to die or recover yet. that takes 2 to 3 weeks and most here have become sick just this past week.
Below is a graph showing the US death rate from covid. There is no reason to believe that line wouldn't continue in that direction without some actions taken.