Why not compare apples and apples? That is, because of covid, people were wearing masks, distancing, large crowds were outlawed, etc. So comparing covid stats

Why not compare apples and apples? That is, because of covid, people were wearing masks, distancing, large crowds were outlawed, etc. So comparing covid stats of 2020 to flu stats of 2017-18 isn't too useful. Why not compare flu stats to covid stats in the same time window? Because of those massive, intrusive efforts to stop the spread of covid, flu numbers were/are way down. The number of flu deaths in the US in 2020 was something like ~700 (usually it is 30,000), and covid was ~400,000 deaths. So, no, not 2x worse.