It has yet to be demonstrated that this is much worse than any other flu season at this point in time. (I am guessing that it will be, but so far that's not showing up in the overall death rates from pneumonia and influenza.)
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/
Fauci has lived (and thrived) in the swamp long enough to know that exceeding expectations has it's rewards, and failing to achieve expectations may be punished. (Sometimes.) I'd suggest that it's implicit that total US deaths will likely be less than 100,000-200,000, and possibly significantly less. (99,000 or fewer.)
At 100,000-200,000 US deaths, the US death total would still be only 5% to 10% of the mortality that was seen during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/-2019-ncov-new-coronavirus/united-states-2019-ncov/842586-comparing-flu-and-covid-19-deaths#post842586
Thanks to Travis McGee for posting this earlier.
the flu season is stretched out over a much longer period of time...and a significant portion of the population is immune to it due to being exposed to similar viruses regularly over their lives and due to a significant portion of the population getting the annual vaccine, none of which applies to COVID19.