Unless I'm reading this wrong, this is incorrect. The nih paper says that influenza deaths represent ~2% of all respiratory deaths, not a death rate.

The CDC estimates the death rate of influenza is at most 0.65% (61k deaths and 9.3MM infected) and at least 0.026% (12k deaths and 45MM infections)

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

Important to remember that older and immunocompromised people are not always the only vulnerable ones. The Spanish flu had an unusual mortality pattern of killing young adults [1]. It also had an overall morality rate around 2%, which caused multiple years of health catastrophe around the entire world. We don't have enough information to say whether COVID19 will match the characteristics of something like the Spanish flu, but the signs are ominous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Patterns_of_fatali...