[SeekAndFind]

I get impatient with people saying Covid-19 is not as deadly as the seasonal flu and then comparing Covid-19 death numbers to flu deaths for AN ENTIRE YEAR.

The fact is these guys are SPEAKING TOO SOON. We are NOT even halfway through the year 2020 yet!

[Bayard]

If the “Seasonal” Flu was 1.5 times as deadly, would we shut down the country for it?

If Corona Virus after nearly 3 months of outbreak is not even at “seasonal” flu levels?

[pepsi_junkie]

A terrible thing about the Spanish Flu was that it took out young healthy people. Soldiers, young parents, shop owners. The sorts of people that come into contact with lots of other people as a matter of course. And it killed fast, often with horrible horrible symptoms. My wife tells me that her great grandmother came home one day from shopping and said she felt a little feverish and wanted to lay down. A few hours later she was dead of Spanish flu and her 5 young children were motherless.

None of this matches China virus at all. It is just like a flu: really dangerous for the elderly and already ill but very few people who are young and healthy will be harmed much long term, if at all, by getting this. Some will, no doubt. But a small portion only.

This is what the actual no kidding results in the USA have been. It's not a hypothetical model of who we think get it, it's actual stats. The elderly and already sick are a gigantic proportion of the deaths.

[tatown]

Real estate on Fearper Island can be had for pennies on the dollar.

[silverleaf]

Exactly
We are comparing the totality of 2 other disease epidemics to 4 months of this one,

However, if the comparative death rates hold true for the future, then the point can be supported

[exDemMom]

One in three people in the world were infected with the Spanish flu and between 20 to 50 million died.

This is key! In the entire world, only 5 million people--or 1 in 1,555 people--have been infected with Covid-19. Of course not as many have died! If a similar number were infected, we would have 170 million deaths. Yes, we can reach that--if we ignore the science and instead cling to conspiracy theories that are abounding right now.

The CDC estimates that in the 2020 flu season, around 43,000 Americans died from the flu.

So, the article already contradicts itself. Already, 93,439 Americans have died from Covid-19--and the number sick is not even close to the number that get sick from the flu every year.

Not even creative and dishonest use of statistics make this author's point.

I know a lot of people (who have ulterior motives, perhaps?) don't like to hear that the lockdowns worked. But they did. As long as we keep up with social distancing and public health officials do their part with contact tracing, testing, and so forth, we still have a window to stop this thing long before it reaches the death toll of the 1917-1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic.

[PIF]

That might change if we knew the real Chinese numbers

[Vermont Lt]

Comparing a three wave influenza epidemic to a three month virus makes sense.

I love the new wave of statisticians out there.