First, it's about an order of magnitude worse in terms of effects than the flu on average. The "mild" category for Covid-19 includes walking pneunomia which is

First, it's about an order of magnitude worse in terms of effects than the flu on average. The "mild" category for Covid-19 includes walking pneunomia which is very much no fun and much more unpleasant than a normal flu, though you can stay at home and ride it out unlike the "severe" or "critical" covid-19 symptoms which require a hospital and oxygen for the severe cases or serious ICU measures for the "critical" cases. Second, it's a lot more transmissable than the flu and nobody is vaccinated against it. So while flu hospitalizations are going to be spread out across months if we just let Covid-19 run it's course half the population will end up being infected at some particular week. And 10% of people will need hopsitalization. And our hospitals can't cope with anything like that number of people and you'll be seeing a lot more than the default 1% of those infected die. We really need to take this seriously. EDIT: I misremembered mild/severe/critical as mild/moderate/severe then corrected it.