And more importantly where we, and other countries are trending. It's a reasonable way to compare between countries - much better than raw numbers.

The seasonal flu has a per capita death in the US avg of around 120 deaths per million. Goes as high as 200, as low as 75 each year.

It's really hard to tell how serious something is without a baseline and a comparison.

Italy right now is equivalent to seasonal flu, but looks to be trending well. Likely they end up at about a yearly per capita death rate in the 200's. equivalent to a really bad flu season.

US is currently WAY WAY below the flu average, but you'd never know that if you read the headlines. Granted we are trending up, and will absolutely continue to trend up. That's scary without context. There is no way that the US ends below 20 deaths per million, and likely is closer to 75-80. But 75-80 deaths per million is one of the lowest flu seasons on record, and would mean that we get 40 X worse than we are now, and without context that could lead to real fear and panic. And we need to act, but not panic.