How Serious Do You Think COVID-19 is Compared to the Flu?

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I pasted this article in the other COVID-19 thread, but it probably is more appropriate here:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 100905002/

Magnitudes more serious and the final death toll numbers of this first wave will either prove or disprove that.

I read this in the New York Times today:

"The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 1.4 million people, according to official counts. As of Wednesday evening, at least 87,000 people have died, and the virus has been detected in at least 177 countries."

I think Covid 19 has surpassed the number of world wide flu deaths per year that we typically see.

And the year's not even half way over yet...

Worldwide flu deaths have been about 650,000 per year.

Flu infections in just the US have been as high as 68 million (2009).
Flu deaths in just the US have been as high as 61,000 (2018).

Most of that occurs within a 4 to 6 month time frame known as cold and flu season.

Our healthy, fit friend died of it today. The doctor that saw my mum in A and E 15 days ago had a slight cough, he's dead too.

3 weeks ago there were 6 confirmed cases in a city of 200,000 as of yesterday 24 dead.

It feels a lot more serious than flu.

Sorry for the loss of your friend
Scary how fast this disease can be.

ah, yes, thanks, that flu death number was just the USA, world is much bigger.

My condolences. Did your mother have it too?

It's not covid but it's umm... not good.
When she was admitted to hospital she had a slight cough and was immediately sent to the covid wing (where she tested negative) . She had a nice two weeks there, unaware of what was going on.

Doctors say that COVID19 will become a seasonal disease.
And a pandemic will end only when more than 50% of the representatives of society will have immunity. Or through a disease or through vaccination.
Different countries will go to this in different ways. But the faster immunity is formed in most citizens, the earlier the economy will be restored.
The US goes this way, hoping to minimize losses. By autumn, the formation of the immune layer will be completed.
The country has a resource for this.
China will go the other way - they will start the industry now, but they will introduce total control of the incidence before the invention of the vaccine.
They have a resource for this.
Europe will be tormented slowly and for a long time. And the industry will not be launched, and the immune layer will form for a very long time.

The usual world death toll from influenza is 650,000

The current world death toll from covid19 is 95,813

It's not so much the coronavirus I fear as it is the global recession they say will be worse than The Great Depression.

I'm still having some thoughts about the US during the Great Depression... it was quite unlike any other poverty-stricken country I know of. It was kind of upside down - instead of finances and other high-level parts of economy suffering from shortages of basic goods, it was basic goods availability suffering from some abstract high-level collapse. I'm sure WWII was more objectively damaging for the basic parts of economy - but it ended the depression instead of deepening it.
Society is a complex system.

And it led Americans to think that fighting endless wars is the solution to all their financial problems. And just look at how that worked out in the end for the Roman Empire.

I hope they don't start another one soon