The exact thing Jake Tapper said is that the pandemic has a higher death toll than the 1918 pandemic. Yes, you can come up with alternative measures for why it

The exact thing Jake Tapper said is that the pandemic has a higher death toll than the 1918 pandemic. Yes, you can come up with alternative measures for why it is not as significant (higher population, length of time it has taken to kill the same number of people, or that because it is old people with co-morbidities dying, the deaths are less significant, which are all present in the article), but when measuring by death count alone, it has a higher toll.