Tell your friend that we have over 30,000 deaths and that's WITH 90% of the country under lockdown. If everybody was just going about their normal business, going to theaters, and 50,000 people sporting events, then the death count would be FAR worse. We're talking in the millions.
COVID-19 has the sweet spot of being deadly, but not too deadly where it kills its host too quickly. But it's also highly contagious and can spread even in asymptomatic people, which isn't the case with the flu. So even though something may only have a 0.5% mortality rate among the general population, but if it has a spread rate of anywhere from 3-5 people per person then that 0.5% mortality rate is still going to kill a lot of people.
And what makes COVID-19 so dangerous compared to the flu is that we don't have a vaccine or confirmed medication that can treat symptoms. Our only defense against COVID-19 is to separate and hide. The flu does kill a lot of people annually, but we have the ability to protect the majority of the population, so it can never rise above a certain threshold. Also healthcare workers can get flu vaccines so they can safely treat patients themselves without risking death themselves. That's a huge difference, with COVID-19 healthcare workers are taking a huge risk because PPE is in limited supply, the disease is highly contagious and we still don't know a lot about how it spreads.
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