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

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CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.

2010-2011: 21,000,000 cases | 37,000 deaths.
2011-2012: 9,300,000 cases | 12,000 deaths
2012-2013: 34,000,000 cases | 43,000 deaths.
2013-2014: 30,000,000 cases | 38,000 deaths.
2014-2015: 30,000,000 cases | 51,000 deaths.
2015-2016: 24,000,000 cases | 23,000 deaths.
2017-2018: 45,000,000 cases | 61,000 deaths.
2018-2019: 35,520,883 cases | 34,157 deaths.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html


Now that is just in the United States.

This says that: Seasonal flu kills 291,000 to 646,000 people worldwide each year.
https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main ... key=208914

Note that most of those deaths occur during flu season. On average, flu season lasts about 13 weeks (3.25 months).

So that's as many as 646,000 deaths within 3 months.

The world would be a much sweeter place if everything in it wasn't trying to kill me.

If you can't enjoy life without something always about to kill you, how can you live at all?

On the level of personal risk, they seem in the same league.
However:
The system is adapted to seasonal flu, peaks are largely predictable and well within capacities of local hospitals.
The corona is still exponentially growing outside China and it is likely to overload healthcare systems like it does in Italy. We don't even know where it would peak without very serious intervention.
This is why, my conclusion is: We're not immensely doomed. It is rational to take measures to slow down the spreading.

What concerns me is how far those measures will be taken and for how long.

As in too much for too long.

All I can say is that this stupid overreaction (cancellations, closing of libraries etc) is unprecedented in peacetime. I can't think of anything comparable in recent history. Even weddings and birthday parties have been affected here. Luckily my city is otherwise more or less as normal and we have parks and beaches... I mean, I know we Aspies aren't the most social people around but still - we can see the bigger picture and want to know WHY.

I guess Lombardy is the place to look for the Why.

The reason WHY is that for years the rich and well to do have profited from rationing healthcare.

As a result, we don't have enough capacity to handle emergencies like a pandemic.

As an example, I didn't buy a ticket to the Taylor Swift concert at Gillette stadium because of what happened last time.
I heard that people were still stuck in the stadium at 6AM the next morning, waiting to get out due to huge traffic jam inside the stadium. Normally the traffic isn't so bad because they schedule extra trains for mass transit, but that didn't happen.

errr....may be peacetime but there is a global pandemic. Not sure its stupid to cancel big events were many people will be there in a crowd were people are rather close to each other, or how closing libraries where people go and have their hands all over books, computers is stupid, and such when there is a global pandemic. Weddings and Birthday parties can have a lot of people to so it does suck but the less people gather, the slower the virus will spread.

Things aren't normal right now, pretending they are won't make it so.

Yup there's no precedent to this weird situation we're in. I know they want to limit the spread but it seems so repressive. I guess there's a first time for everything...

Q&A: Similarities and differences – COVID-19 and influenza


https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detai ... -influenza


The reproductive number – the number of secondary infections generated from one infected individual – is understood to be between 2 and 2.5 for COVID-19 virus, higher than for influenza. However, estimates for both COVID-19 and influenza viruses are very context and time-specific, making direct comparisons more difficult.

I've tried to read as much as I can but am nooo expert, so I'll give you my very amateur opinion.
I understand why it seems so confusing to all of us that such drastic steps are being taken for the new virus. It kind of boggles my mind.

First you have to ask yourself, why are we suddenly facing a shortage of ventilators?
Have you ever been on or seen someone on a ventilator? I've worked with people on them quite a bit. It's not just that you have this machine breathing for you, but you also have to have allllll of your other body functions orchestrated as well: your body must be fed, your waste must be cleaned up, your skin will break down if you are not moved constantly, your body temperature, your blood oxygen content monitored etc etc.
So, when someone has to be on ventilator it is hugely taxing to the healthcare system. When this disease is bad, which it mostly is not, the sick need a ventilator.

We have dealt with the flu for a long long time, we have vaccines to lessen the impact, we have many deaths but they are usually in a predictable subset of the population during a predictable time and one never (very rarely?) hears of the health care system being overwhelmed especially not in big cities. We have a tested and prescribed treatment for the flu that works as best as we can manage for those that can get it soon enough and who's health is not precarious already. Flu deaths are prevented as much as we, as a fragile species, can.


So why is this different?

We have no specific treatment. None. No one knows what to do.

It is extremely, extremely contagious. We do not have a vaccine and best case scenario that will take a year minimum. I took care of my son at home when he had H1N1. He was terribly sick but I did not, nor did anyone else in our household, contract it. That is not the case now.

While many, many, many people have the disease already, most of them are not all that ill. Not ill enough to require hospitalization. That is the sneaky badness of this disease. Because all of those people are spreading the disease and we can't see it happening until they are tested. When the disease hits someone who's health is weak in some way, they may not even know they have an underlying condition, and sometimes its just a heavy dose of the disease in an otherwise very healthy person, they get deathly ill. They need a ventilator.

And, for those who get very sick but survive, their lungs may have sustained life long damage.

It’s more serious because we don’t have natural immunity to it like the regular flu.

It’s more serious because people who don’t get seriously ill from the regular flu are getting seriously ill with COVID-19.

It’s more serious because we don’t know much about it.

Why else would governments risk a worldwide depression to combat COVID-19?

Then they need to focus all possible efforts and resources into the vaccine and as much research as possible and as soon as possible, whatever the cost.

I can understand some of the conspiracy theories, but we need to really stand together so that we can get through this terrible time and emerge stronger. Will humanity learn from it?

Cancellation & closing of places is not stupid. People had died, one guy in NJ didn’t take care of himself, he was coughing up blood, he should have gone to the hospital, but he got on a plane instead, he ended up dying. Four other people died, cuz they had a family dinner party. ALOT of people are in the hospital, in NY hospital, they are overwhelming in patients.

I think its much worse than the different strains of flu we have in our winters. The death rate is much higher than the regular flu (almost 10% in Italy!) and its also very contagious which means it has the potential of killing millions.
Considering we don't have a vaccine or effective treatment yet, lockdowns and curfews will likely continue for the next months and the economy will most likely enter in to a recession (something that doesn't happen with the flu).

I had the flu this time last year, and boy was I ill with it. I even thought I had pneumonia but I didn't. I had lost my appetite, my whole body ached, my skin hurt to touch, my temperature was sky high, I couldn't stop coughing and my nose was stuffed up, and I couldn't even walk without falling down.

My boyfriend had it first, but he didn't seem to be as ill as I was - and he's the one with COPD.