When comparing this to the flu, it depends on what you are comparing to.
From the best I can tell (maybe someone can set me straight) the flu is not always diagnosed strictly on a positive flu test. You can walk into a doctor's office, present with flu like symptoms in the middle of flu season, and the doctor may diagnose it as flu without a test.
The CDC uses some type of formula to determine how many people actually have the flu - or at least that's how I view it.
Learn about how CDC estimates the burden of seasonal influenza in the U.S.
www.cdc.gov
In the 2018-2019 season the 35,520,883 number doesn't necessarily mean that 35,520,883 people were tested for the flu and came back as positive. I'm not sure if the 16,520,350 number is positive flu tests. The 490,561 hospitalizations are probably true positive flu tests, or at least I'd come nearer to believe that all of those tested positive for the flu. But there were definitely more than 490,561 that would have tested positive for the flu. But how many? We don't know.
Until you know the number of positive flu tests and how many of that subset died you really can't compare it to the number of positive covid-19 test and how many of that subset died.
Either way, covid-19 has already killed more than the 34,157 the flu killed in 2018-2019. And then consider, that 34,157 number you are using is probably a lot smaller, because you can really only count deaths that came from real positive flu tests.
The only thing you can really compare it to is the mortality rate - number of deaths out of an entire population.
Flu: 34,157 deaths out of 320,000,000 people is a mortality rate of 0.0107%
Covid-19: 49,963 deaths out of 320,000,000 people is a mortality rate of 0.0156%
That might not seem like a lot, but it is more. And it will continue to grow. Is it more than the flu? Yes. Worth the panic? That's debatable.
You also have to consider that there's no vaccine for covid-19, but there is for the flu. The flu has been around for years... Covid-19 is new, so this means that the human body just hasn't seen anything like Covid-19 to base any semblance of an immune response from. So, knowing that, we knew Covid-19 was going to kill more people than the flu. If Covid-19 winds up killing 70,000 to 90,000 people I'm not sure if that is all that unexpected.
And as I've stated several times. The numbers in New York City are way out in left field and really threw the models for a loop. I think there's definitely something going on in New York City (and to some extent the whole New England region) that is spreading this virus for than in other areas of the country. If the number of deaths in New York City had stuck to what was happening throughout the rest of the country, then that would probably be about 10,000 fewer deaths. Obviously that didn't happen in New York City, but it's worth microscoping some of the numbers coming out of New York City and when all is said and done a study probably needs to be done to figure out what happened in New York City with this virus to help prevent that from happening again.