If you call Covid-19 a "simple flu", you'll lose credibility to those you're talking with. The issue is not boolean. It's not one way or another per se. There are several interpretations
- covid is imaginary. The propaganda, the fear, the tyrants running around are reacting to something that isn't there.
- covid is real: This is a real virus but there is no imaginary ideas associated with it.
- covid is complex: Covid-19 has a real-part and an imaginary part. There is a real virus and there are imaginary ideas associated with it. In terms of what is necessary for treatment, it's magnitude, and so on.
A free people will have a much stronger immune system than one who is not allowed to leave their home. The Swedish numbers give us a single data point of a country that never had lockdowns. Covid-19 in death rates is similar to a bad flu year but not as bad as the Spanish flu but a bad flu. There is more to a disease than it's death rate of course, and the symptoms are different.
Instead, don't dispute the virus is real, a better strategy is to fight the measures against it (mandatory masks, unsafe vaccines) themselves. If you claim it's not real, those who would otherwise listen to you will dismiss your other ideas, get the dangerous vaccine and wear a mask all day.