If we are talking about just the sheer number of deaths, then yes Covid-19 technically will kill much more people than for instance 9/11. However, this is not the only statistical perspective you can take. For example, on 9/11 nearly 3,000 people were killed in what amounted to less than a block radius. Surely such a death density is much more horrifying than Covid-19 deaths which are occurring in the entire country.
That is however not the point. It is simply a demonstration that changing perspective illuminates some characteristics of each tragedy that may be much worse than the other. The larger point is that comparing Covid-19 deaths to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor is comparing death to murder, obviously, the two are not equivalent. The evils of murder like what happened on 9/11 are man-made. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both deliberate attacks on the US, so unless you are arguing that Covid-19 is a biological attack then the moral comparison is rather ignorant.
Death and murder are not the same. If death from Covid-19 and murder from 9/11 are the same, then why Covid-19? There is plenty of tragedies in our past that way outnumber the deaths from 9/11, the Spanish flu, for instance, deaths from car accidents, deaths from cancer and heart disease, etc. Comparing deaths from Covid-19 to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor is sloppy and ignorant sophistry.
