Rob Del Medico if COVID-19 fatalities are at ~80k now and the final tally turns out to be below~160k, then fatalities have indeed peaked for the current wave. In the post, I don’t speculate as to the final number of fatalities, only that I expect it to be far less than the 288,671 deaths that would be the 2020 equivalent of 100,000 deaths in 1968.

I researched your point that only 33,800 people died from the 1968 flu pandemic during the 1968–69 season, and did find a source confirming that: https://nieman.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/pod-assets/microsites/NiemanGuideToCoveringPandemicFlu/AHistoryOfPandemics/ACenturyOfFluPandemics.aspx.html

The same source mentions that 70,000 Americans died in 1957–58 from the Asian Flu pandemic that year, so perhaps that would have been a better comparison to make. Projecting that fatality rate to our 2020 population, it would imply 234,258 equivalent American deaths in a single flu season.

I’m not going to rewrite this post focusing on the 1957–58 pandemic instead, but my point still holds — the world has reacted far more aggressively to COVID-19 than to worse pandemics earlier in our history.