You are comparing those numbers directly, but that's not how you compare those numbers.
First the population size, as per the article, was half what it is now. So you can either double the asian flu deaths or half the covid deaths to account for this.
That still leaves a huge gap, but this is where demographic analysis comes in.
Usually you see this as age adjusted deaths.
In this case, the population of the US has been aging for a long time so you would expect more deaths from covid than the Asian flu for an equally deadly virus.
The other demographic change that is important, especially when talking about covid is rates of obesity, which is something else that has grown over time in the US population.
That's a really long winded way to say you can't just compare raw numbers.
The article doesn't give an explanation of how they came to their conclusion, but if you take population size, age distribution, and obesity rates into account, I could see the adjusted numbers being close.
First the population size, as per the article, was half what it is now. So you can either double the asian flu deaths or half the covid deaths to account for this.
That still leaves a huge gap, but this is where demographic analysis comes in.
Usually you see this as age adjusted deaths.
In this case, the population of the US has been aging for a long time so you would expect more deaths from covid than the Asian flu for an equally deadly virus.
The other demographic change that is important, especially when talking about covid is rates of obesity, which is something else that has grown over time in the US population.
That's a really long winded way to say you can't just compare raw numbers.
The article doesn't give an explanation of how they came to their conclusion, but if you take population size, age distribution, and obesity rates into account, I could see the adjusted numbers being close.