Hunger/starvation are often caused by political factors which can be difficult to circumvent. And though there's plenty of food in the world, logistics is a major barrier. The cost of safely transporting the food many thousands of miles is expensive. Then it has to be distributed to the people who need it while guarding it from people who would take it for themselves.

And actually the estimated influenza deaths are a bit lower. At most, around 650,000 deaths.

The U.S. has about 34,000 flu deaths each year, though I would guess that many of those are elderly or people who did not get proper medical care. There have not been 80,000 flu deaths in the U.S. anytime recent.

I'm not really sure what type of response you're looking for. People die all over the world for a wide variety of reasons. Some are preventable but many are not.

Those that be decided that the world economies needed to be sent on strike so that the burden of starvation & hunger would be spread more equitably and the concepts of communism more readily inculcated.
That the god faithful would be particularly decimated pursuing their illogical beliefs was an added bonus. That billionaires would be given billions in people's money by corrupt governments was further used to create belief in communism.

In the USA, 80k die from flu yearly... Covid killed over 200k in the USA already.

And. It. Hasn't. Been. One. Year. Yet...