This chart has been making the rounds:
Ironically, I see both sides of the debate appealing to this kind of data. At one level it's useful to put our situation in perspective, but there are limitations on this comparison:
i) The basic problem is that because the coronavirus is an unfolding event, we won't have a basis of comparison until this particular pandemic has run its course. So the comparison is premature.
ii) At a psychological level, it isn't very consoling to compare a past disaster with a present disaster. You're not experiencing a disaster from generations ago. It's like telling a G.I. in the swamps of Vietnam that the trenches of WWI were even worse. Even if they were, that's a very abstract comparison. If, at any moment, you might step on a krait hidden in the underbrush, the historical comparison isn't terribly reassuring.
iii) I assume estimates of the fatalities from pandemics that happened centuries ago are very rough educated guesses. Indeed, even in the case of the Spanish Influenza, if you have mass burials, there's not much opportunity to do an accurate body count, and keeping meticulous records isn't a priority.
iv) In addition, the human population is smaller as we go back in time, so these pandemics killed a larger percentage of the human race
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