“So far this year over 24,000 have died from influenza.”
Seasonal influenza typically has a 13 week run and a 0.1% mortality rate. Coronavirus produced its first American death on February 29th so we are in week 7 and thus far there is a 2.96% mortality rate as of yesterday (10,871 deaths out of 367,004 cases).
The mortality rate will probably increase quite a bit in time, when the remainder of the cases are resolved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic#Epidemiology
Cases 367,461
Deaths 10,910
Recovered 19,522