The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) documents and web site present at least THREE different historical (pre-2020) estimates of deaths from “influenza and pneumonia,” “pneumonia and influenza,” and/or “influenza” or the “flu” presumably meaning the influenza category of viruses.  These are the value in the annual leading causes of death report (about 55,000) deaths each year,  the tables of “pneumonia and influenza” (abbreviated as P&I) from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCSH) used on the FluView web site — about 188,000 deaths per year, OVER THREE TIMES the leading causes of death number, and the output of a mysterious model of deaths attributed to the influenza category of viruses, a broad range centered at about 55,000 deaths per year.

Deaths attributed to COVID-19 in 2020 have frequently been compared to an estimate of about 55,000, either to the date of the report or for the entire year.  The language used is often unclear but appears to refer to either the CDC’s influenza mathematical model or the leading causes of death number, which are similar numbers but technically not the same.  

Which of these three death numbers, one of which differs by a factor of OVER THREE from the other two, should be compared to COVID-19 deaths?  Indeed, it could well be incorrect to compare any of them to the COVID-19 deaths.