Last year there were 45 million Americans who caught the flu. It was more deadly than normal and 61,000 died. If the same number of people caught this new virus, the estimated death toll would be 900,000.
The CDC estimates for the year you referenced consisted of 45MM people who had flu symptoms, 21MM who sought medical attention, and 810k that landed in the hospital.
Now, your 900,000 quantum is based on the 45MM people who had flu symptoms. To keep it apples-to-apples, you'd want to multiply the 2% CFR by the number of people who'd be hospitalized in America with cornoavirus.
If we assumed all 810k people who landed in the hospital with influenza would be a comparable number of people hospitalized with coronavirus (a purely speculative assumption but it's at least anchored to SOMETHING concrete), 2% of that lot would be 16,200 people.
That's a lot of dead people, but it's not 61,000 or 900,000.
“Last year there were 45 million Americans who caught the flu.”
True, but to add to that, how many Americans had flu shots and thus DID NOT catch the flu (as was my case)?
No flu shot for this bug, for quite a while.