Depends upon what you consider “out of control”. What we label as normal flu kills 12,000 to 65,000 Americans per year while, to-date, while CV has killed 85 Americans this year. The data clearly shows flu is more “out of control”. In addition, the CDC currently believes CV to have only a slightly higher mortality rate than the flu but admits it may have a much lower mortality rate since we don’t know how many unreported cases exist. We won’t have a good handle on this until the CV test kits are readily available.
All of this info is available here:
Coronavirus Disease 2019 vs. the Flu.
I believe we are in this state of panic because this disease is new and poorly understood. And let’s not overlook the media’s part in all this. We’re getting breathless updates, alerts, and notices every hour. If this happened every time someone died from the flu they’d have no time to report on anything else.