Quote:
Originally Posted by cdrookie
Infections
COVID-19: Approximately 207,518 cases worldwide; 7,324 cases in the U.S. as of Mar. 18, 2020.*
Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year.
Deaths
COVID-19: Approximately 8,248 deaths reported worldwide; 115 deaths in the U.S., as of Mar. 18, 2020.*
Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.
The COVID-19 situation is changing rapidly. Since this disease is caused by a new virus, people do not have immunity to it, and a vaccine may be many months away. Doctors and scientists are working on estimating the mortality rate of COVID-19, but at present, it is thought to be higher than that of most strains of the flu.
-John Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering
I'm sure it's been said in this thread but I'm not reading through 9 pages of it. How's come none of this shutdown stay home BS has been done before? This Flu disease thing looks pretty stout, looks like it's been around a while, our bodies have built up immunity, AND there's a vaccine!!! But human beings are losing their lives every year because of it. COVID-19 has a LONG ways to go to catch up. If there was something else going on in the world to keep the media occupied this wouldn't even be an issue. The real virus is Media Diarrhea and there's no known cure. I use to think I'd be dead before this country is completely ****** but after seeing this fiasco unfold, the sad truth is I was wrong.
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And yet, seasonal flu doesn't overwhelm first world healthcare systems and kill hundreds of people a day.
The death rate for seasonal flu is really low. The death rate for COVID19 appears to be significantly higher. The hospitalization rate for COVID19 is MUCH higher. Even healthy people are ending up in the hospital from this thing.
And the BIGGEST problem with comparing this to seasonal flu is that it's just getting started and countries are taking drastic action to curb it. You can't quote a years worth of statistics for the flu as a meaningful comparison to a few months of COVID19.
If it was left unchecked, if we did nothing to curb it's spread our healthcare system would be completely overwhelmed and millions would die within a year.
The irony of drastic measures to curb the spread is that if they work people will feel that they were unnecessary.
To paraphrase a quote I read a couple days ago:. Whatever we do at the beginning will seem like overreaction and at the end won't have been enough.