“It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.” This from the CDC’s page on the 1918 pandemic.
Back then, the world population was 1.5B. Now it is 7.9B. For COVID-19 to have the same relative impact, 2.4B people would have to be infected and 240M would die. So far, there have been ~100M cases and 2M deaths. The worst comparison is that 420,000 have died in the U.S. and we’re headed toward exceeding the number of deaths in the 1918 pandemic, with a much larger population (330M vs 103M).
There was no vaccine or medical therapy in 1918. I’m looking forward to getting vaccinated.