Assuming a mortality rate of 1%, only 55 million people, or about 1/6 of the US population will need to be infected to reach 550k deaths directly from COVID-19.

Assuming a mortality rate of 1%, only 55 million people, or about 1/6 of the US population will need to be infected to reach 550k deaths directly from COVID-19. The 1/6 and 1% numbers are both conservative. Hence, at least 10x the flu. The indirect deaths will be larger still because 10x more will be hospitalized, which the medical infrastructure is not prepared to handle.