Over 500,000 people die globally from influenza-related respiratory problems every year. And how many people need to be infected to achieve that result? More

Over 500,000 people die globally from influenza-related respiratory problems every year. And how many people need to be infected to achieve that result? More people than the Wuhan coronavirus would need. Try an order of magnitude more. That's why the flu typically doesn't make the news and this coronavirus does. I don't know where you are, but in California the 2017-18 flu season was indeed heavily covered.