I just hate these blogs saying this virus is akin to the the flu. Does the flu leave bodies in trucks, apartments, and bagged on the streets? Does the flu kill dozens of workers in meat processing plants every year. Does the flu take more than ten years of life from the average person it kills?
Also, suicide death rates are still wildly unknown but deaths by traffic fatalities are way down. We need to get help to people feeling suicidal. Before the virus and now especially.
> I just hate these blogs saying this virus is akin to the the flu
Author here. That's a mischaracterization of what I said. But yes it is true that overall mortality is similar to the flu. I settled on COVID-19 being 3x as deadly, but that figure is up to debate.
The important thing to understand is the varying risk profiles. The flu kills the very young and very old, whereas COVID-19 primarily kills the very old.
> Does the flu leave bodies in trucks, apartments, and bagged on the streets?
Yes, pandemic flu absolutely does.
> Does the flu kill dozens of workers in meat processing plants every year
Yup. Pandemic flu absolutely would.
> Does the flu take more than ten years of life from the average person it kills?
Could you clarify this point? I don't quite understand what you're saying. The flu takes away more wellbeing-years per death because it kills infants and young children whereas COVID-19 almost never does.
Two comments. One, saying something that is 300% larger than another is “similar” is stretching the definition of similarity. Two, both the numerator and the denominator matter in the death rate. In a given year, maybe 20% of the population get the seasonal flu. We could potentially see 80+% of the population contract covid. That’s another 4x multiplier of fatalities, but also hospitalizations.
The latter point is precisely why I was careful to say "pandemic flu" when responding to the above. But yes, the point is very valid. A novel disease with the same IFR of an established disease will kill a lot more in the year that it is introduced.
(BTW, something that occurred to me is that the fact that infants are largely spared from COVID-19 is even more of a blessing than it already seems. Once this passes through our population, new infections will be in those who are not immune which will primarily be infants/young children, who we know thus far have had really good outcomes relative to adults. That means the enduring legacy of this will be much better than what we see with Influenza)
> One, saying something that is 300% larger than another is “similar” is stretching the definition of similarity.
I defined "ballpark" in the article as less than an order of magnitude. But, I think this is a thought exercise that might help:
Imagine that SARS-CoV-2 doesn't exist, but we learn that this flu season is going to be extra deadly. Instead of the ~50k of deaths last year, we know that there will be ~150k deaths.
Would we rationally take the same extreme of measures that we have taken for Covid? (Or, conversely, should we already have been taking these measures for past flu seasons)?
Also I think you're very aware of this, but just for any on-lookers: don't look at the flu comparisons as intending to minimize COVID-19; but rather comparing to flu gives us an existing mental model that most people are familiar with that helps us figure out what measures make sense and what don't.
So, I just went and took a look. US deaths from influenza have ranged from 12,000 to a high of 61,000, with an average of more like 30,000. So, if we had prior knowledge that we would have a season with 150,000 deaths, which would be unlike anything we've seen since at least the 1950's and maybe longer, I expect that the government would indeed take some evasive action. But that's still not the right comparison. For covid-19, we were looking at somewhere between 750,000 and 2 million deaths. In other words, 20-50 times more than a typical flu season.
Please get the virus, and then spread it to your mom, dad and elder siblongs. Once that has happened come back to us and let us know how similar to the flu you think it is.
Comparing COVID-19 to a "Pandemic Flu" is even more disingenuous. Very few people alive today have a memory of the Spanish Flu. When you say that you play into Republican hands because everyone who "wants to believe" will think regular flu. That's what the Fox Newses are pushing, as you are well aware.
The regular flu does NOT kill significantly more young people than COVID-19. The number of young people killed by either is almost a statistical outlier when comparing against overall deaths.
Also, suicide death rates are still wildly unknown but deaths by traffic fatalities are way down. We need to get help to people feeling suicidal. Before the virus and now especially.
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