This is like using only GDP to compare economies; it's a useful data point, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

From what we've seen, yes, the mortality rate of COVID19 is similar to the flu. However, the mortality rate of the flu is without other interventions aside from the flu vaccine. In a regular flu season the public doesn't social distance; they tend to group even closer indoors because of the cold weather. The US has never normalized mask wearing; people in the beginning stages of the flu will go about their lives, and work places actively encourage people to continue to work in-person unless they are too unwell to do so. I would wager most people in the US don't improve their hygiene during a regular flu season either. We've done all that (to an extent) with COVID19 and we've barely managed to make an impact.

Look at some other important data points. Average US flu deaths / year: 36k [1]. COVID19 deaths in the US in only 11 months: 445k. [2] If we assume the first COVID19 death in the US was in early February as some report, that's over 12x the deaths/year than the flu. If current trends hold (~3k deaths/day for the next 27 days) until March 2 (the first officially confirmed COVID19 death in the US), we'd be at 526k deaths, or more than 14x as many deaths/year as the flu. If this ran at this rate for the entirety of the next 365 days, we'd hit nearly 1.1 million deaths, or over 30x as many deaths/year as the flu. That's assuming we don't have any massive improvements with vaccine rollout.

The contagiousness of the two is also orders of magnitude different. Flu is estimated to have an R0 value of ~1.5 [3]. Some estimates put COVID19 at an R0 value of 5.7 [4]. (Remember, R0 is without interventions). The way to estimate "herd immunity" rates is the Critical Vaccination Threshold formula: (1 - (1/R0)) / E, where E is the effectiveness of a vaccine. With an R0 of 1.5 and an efficacy of 67% (from your second link. Remember, this is the effectiveness of the vaccine, not the effectiveness in a real-world population, which factors in vaccine rates), we would need roughly 50% of the population to vaccinated to start preventing illnesses in those that are unvaccinated. With an R0 of 5.7 and an efficacy of 94% (Pfizer vaccine), COVID 19 would require nearly 88% of the population vaccinated to achieve the same rate. Even using the lower-quoted R0 value of 2.5 (R-value _with_ other interventions, such as social distancing, mask wearing, improved hygiene), we'd need nearly 64% of the population vaccinated.

You're also ignoring the fact that, despite our interventions, there are currently 3 other strains of COVID19 spreading, all of which are speculated to be both more contagious _and_ more deadly. [5] While the current vaccines are _effective enough_ against the strains, there's nothing saying a new variant couldn't emerge that is resistant to the current vaccines, starting a new pandemic. And you're also ignoring the long-term cases of COVID19 [6] as well as the long term effects post-infection outside of death [7], including chronic cardiovascular damage, kidney damage, neurological effects, among many others.

So yes, the mortality rates are similar, but literally nothing else is. We don't know enough about this virus to let it run rampant, and the world should have done more from the get-go to keep it contained.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

[2]: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

[3]: https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/2020/12/07/covid-19...

[4]: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID

[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#Longe...