Coverage gap between "new corona" and "seasonal flu"

According to Toshimi Yoshida (Tokyo Institute of Technology) in the Tokyo Shimbun dated April 6, about 10 million people in Japan are infected with seasonal influenza each year, and the number of related deaths reaches about 10,000. Regardless, he states that no declaration was made.
This number is far greater than the damage caused by COVID-19, which is now a big problem.
So why didn't the damage caused by seasonal flu become a big problem?

This issue has been mentioned several times in this blog, but I would like to consider the reason.
The reason may be that the damage caused by seasonal flu has been tolerated as "unavoidable".
It seems unreasonable, but I can't think of any other reason.
Therefore, the government and local governments did not announce the number of infected people every day, and the media did not report it.
Even if it were reported, people would not have shown much interest.
This caused a gap in coverage.
Building on the indifference of the people, the government has continued to implement policies to reduce the cost of infection research and reduce the number of hospital beds.
This is one of the factors that threaten the current medical collapse due to COVID-19 infection.
There is a high possibility that new virus infection problems will occur in the future.
In order to build a system to deal with it, we should be more interested in countermeasures against infections and damages such as seasonal influenza and medical systems.