Initially I thought of those numbers (36m in the US) as totally unrealistic. But then comparing to seasonal influenza case counts, they seem to be within that

Initially I thought of those numbers (36m in the US) as totally unrealistic. But then comparing to seasonal influenza case counts, they seem to be within that order of magnitude (39m-56m cases): https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... would that be implausible? am I misunderstanding or comparing the wrong metrics? I'm actually curious to see the time interval of when the first true COVID-19 case appeared plotted over first true 2019-2020 influenza cases. If along the same timeline, you'd figure that social distancing would have affected the R0 of both. Assuming that SARS-CoV-2 is truly more (or comparably) contagious, 36M could be plausible. To be clear: I am not equivalating COVID-19 fatality rate w/ the flu, or suggesting it is "innocuous" as the flu is.