This virus has nothing in common with the flu, except being a respiratory virus. I don't mean this in terms of survival rates, although it's transparently obvio

This virus has nothing in common with the flu, except being a respiratory virus. I don't mean this in terms of survival rates, although it's transparently obvious that diminishing the danger is the purpose of this talking point. But even ignoring that, there is just no reason why COVID should be compared with the flu and not, say, Hepatitis A (B or C), Ebola, HPV. Route of infection (here: respiratory) correlates welll with the effectiveness of various countermeasures. Symptoms are still somewhat similar but less so, with COVID causing rare symptoms like anosmia but relatively little fever and almost no rhinitis. It's completely useless for pharmaceutical treatments as well as for predicting severity, which for respiratory (and every other class) ranges from benign to certain death.