1918 Pandemic was a bit over 12 months long, Black Death was about 5 years. We've only been at this since December.
So do you claim that there will be 5 million US deaths by the end of the year? By 2025? By 2080? Just trying to get a handle on exactly what you're estimating.
If you can comprehend how the Covid virus attacks the body and how the body responds, you might think a bit differently. Especially how more contagious Covid is vs the various flus and their strains. For both it's still a secondary infection that ends up killing the person, but the initial viral attack is what started it.
I suppose it is possible. I'm happy to admit a good bit of ignorance and am happy to learn more. From what I've seen so far, however, we're not going to hit 5 million deaths in the US short of a major mutation or a perpetual inability to develop immunity.
Out of interest, are you professing to have that level of comprehension?
Having crunched the numbers more than a few ways, I can get to 5 million using some not completely unreasonable assumptions.
1. We assume we've caught 50% of the infections.
2. We assume that the death rate we've seen by age group holds.
3. We assume every single American gets it.
Under those conditions we'll get about 5 million deaths.
That said, I don't think we've tested enough people to assume we've identified anywhere close to 50% of the infections especially given the known incidence of a significant number of people never manifesting detectable symptoms, and most of the testing is not capable of detecting previous infection - just active infection.