I find a more interesting comparison the Influenza of 2017-18. I agree strongly that every Covid death is a person, father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, etc… And I feel horrible about every death. The thing is I only just discovered the devastation that was caused by the flu of 2017-18. There are differences in recorded deaths but they definitely come in somewhere between 60,000 and 90,000. Regarless of what that number is it’s a staggering range. Most strange is I did not hear about it. No screaming from the media rooftops the daily death toll. No concern from the general public. We seem to be numb to death if it fits into some sort of accepted part of our daily lives like “Flu Season”. For me it’s not about the morbidity ratio in this comparison it’s about the emense loss of life in a single season and the fact that no alarm bells seem to go off when it’s something we live with yearly. The flu death numbers are not as high as that high every year but there are alway many, many deaths and no calls for social distancing when flu numbers spike?
deleted FB on valentine’s day 2016 and haven’t looked back
Edit: i was not dumped just decided i had too much fomo
I have real concerns about anyone whose first reaction to 150,000 dead is “Meh, that’s not so many, considering.” Especially when they seem to have so little understanding of math. Or epidemiology. Or tact. Just saying.
“There is a lot of room for improvement if we act appropriately.”
simple calculations could be misleading or even dangerous. “You can’t win. If you overdo it, you panic everybody. If you underdo it, they get complacent.”
The worst case estimate isn’t the best estimate, and the most worried reaction, understandable as it might be, isn’t necessarily the most helpful reaction. Downplaying the pandemic is bound to get people killed, but panicking can kill people, too. Self-harm out of fear or prolonged isolation; failure to seek medical attention for Covid unrelated issues, out of fear or due to restrictions; long term deaths due to stress and prolonged self confinement - just to name a few. Those are very real, and while they are clearly secondary considerations right now, there will be a point in time when these could actually outweigh the benefits of particular measures.
we’ve got a yearly updated flu vaccine, so that takes the place of physical distancing.
in addition people ages 65 and older account for between 71% and 85% of flu-related deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/65over.htm
if you are in that age range and have a regular doctor, they will definitely be talking to you about the flu. it could be you’re just not old enough yet for the existing yearly prevention campaigns to register
even in the states you’ll sometimes see older or immuno-compromised people with masks and hand sanitizer come flu season
yes. once we have a vaccine, and people have access to it, when we can stop worrying about killing other people with our breath.
now that people have grasped the economics…
it seems concern driving trollies about self-harm is the latest talking point. unfortunately because of that, it’s hard to take your question very seriously.
increased domestic violence, substance abuse, and suicides are of course real issues
so try to form a routine, get plenty of exercise, don’t treat physical distance as social distance ( meaning stay connected with friends and family ), and seek help when you need it
you’ll have to rely on health experts for larger scale answers to your question… i recommend not looking to fox news, reason magazine, or the president for guidance
Thank you for your reply. We do have prevention campaigns and vaccines. My point is more even though we have vaccines the flu killed say 80,000 people in the U.S… Covid to date has killed 40,000 (U.S.). It’s on track to kill as many, probably more but the point is the lack of empathy over flu deaths relative to Covid deaths. Those are the same exact people. As you stated the flu kills mostly people ages 65 and older, same with Covid. In fact the same exact people are at risk for both, it’s the same category of people dying and largely in the same manner. I know everyone in the world has got into their collective heads that we are all at equal risk of dying from Covid but it simply isn’t true. Nobody gets upset when vast quantities of people die from the flu, they think that’s only older people, it can’t happen to them. Covid’s mortality rate is higher but it’s the same people at risk. I guess what I’m surprised by is how so many people are in a sort of outrage over the Covid deaths but are la-de-da over flu deaths. Same people dying, similar numbers.
I don’t think that’s correct. Every year there is a significant effort to develop vaccines for the most prevalent strains of the flu, and flu vacinations are promoted and recommmended, especially for the most vulnerable segments of the population. Everybody in my family gets a flu shot every year, to protect ourselves and to help protect others. We, and many other people, get very upset over unneccessary and preventable deaths, be it from the flu or for any other cause.
I have never encountered such a person, perhaps we run in different circles. I am curious which reaction you would feel more comfortable with everyone having - should we all be la-de-da over both flu and covid? Or should we be outraged about both? Which reaction do you have about both? I find both deeply upsetting, and have felt so about the flu for quite come time, and have agitated for improvements to the United States’ abysmal health care for many years.
On issue I do have with emphasizing death rates due to covid-19 is that it obscures the fact that a substantial number of people, including younger people, have “recovered” or are “recovering” from it - having spent weeks in ICU, and facing permanent lung and/or heart damage. Not to mention astronomical medical bills. Hard to just “get back to work” if you can’t really breathe right, and are facing a $500,000 debt.
even if we assume your underlying premise that covid and seasonal flu are killing the same people in the same numbers ( neither which is actually true fwiw, re: rate of deaths, re: racial disparities ) look at what it is taking to hold those numbers down
the whole point of isolation is to stop from overwhelming our hospitals because unlike the flu there’s nothing else that can stop it from spreading
flu does not overwhelm our hospitals, it doesn’t spread like wildfire through our communities, it doesn’t kill and injure people the way this coronavirus does
full stop.
^ this
i guess if covid has suddenly awakened some new found empathy for you regarding the flu: good on you.
get out there next year and spread the word. use isolation to brainstorm awareness campaigns or work on that medical degree.
just don’t underplay this unique outbreak and the lives it will cost in the meantime
- “[Between] 12,000 and 61,000 deaths annually since 2010 can be blamed on the flu.”
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Yes the flu is also bad
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It’s not similar numbers in New York
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The whole country could have been like that. We didn’t know in advance.
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We don’t actually know what it’s going to do next. It’s stopped getting worse but it hasn’t gotten any better. By comparison, “the flu” is predictable.
61,000 in just the 2017-18 season. This number is debated as it was originally counted near 90,000. Either way this is directly from the cdc. These very high numbers of deaths occurred precisely because it was not predictable.
CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2017–2018 season was high with an estimated 45 million people getting sick with influenza, 21 million people going to a health care provider, 810,000 hospitalizations, and 61,000 deaths from influenza (Table 1). The number of cases of influenza-associated illness that occurred during 2017-2018 was the highest since the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, when an estimated 60 million people were sick with influenza (7).
The real takeaway here is that Covid-19 is on track to kill many, many more people than the flu this year even though we’ve taken far more draconian measures in response to Covid-19 than we ever did in response to the annual flu.
As things currently stand, the average American is more likely to die of Covid-19 than any other cause, natural or otherwise. Damn straight we have good reason to be more concerned about this disease than a run-of-the-mill influenza strain.
Facebook can be exhausting, but I do enjoy being a source of information for the denialists. They don’t like admitting they are conspiracy zealots because that damages their self perceived image of intelligence, but if plied with enough sources and data in a non partisan way, they eventually have to admit they are working with unfounded beliefs.
Facebook also has some very cool stuff on it as well, lots of amazing and wonderful people out there.
Source, please.
I doubt it very much. Many countries have travel restrictions in place
Sure, you can have a source. Not sure how much it willl help you:
Thanks!
I often get interesting perspectives out of Aftonbladet’s political commentary, so I generally trust them to do good research.
Here, one hairdresser reports an influx of European customers, another five confirm via telephone that Danish come to them to get a haircut. This results in the headline “European women flee the quarantine - for a luxury party in Stockholm”.
Sadly, my Swedish is not enough to follow the audio provided. 
Definitely sad news. Those people are playing with the life of others.
I think you are right that people who are under the risk of being killed by an influenza virus are also under the risk of dying from Corona virus infections (and I include the common human cold Corona viruses in that).
However, we do not have any vaccine (as opposed to influenza vaccines), we can’t simply mass produce a vaccine like we could for influenza even if we have found one (different type of virus, influenza-type vaccines can be “bred” using eggs and we have contingency plans for that), and we do not have any herd immunity (yet) as for common-cold Corona viruses. Also, we do not have long-term established antiviral and supportive treatment.
Summing that up, please do not compare the two. Do not mix them up. Do try, by all means, to get 60% of the population vaccinated against influenza. But when you do, do try not to play one thing against the other.
