[Mathews]

I just took a look a the Influenza A and B numbers on the CDC Web Page... way more scary than what we’re seeing out of this CoronaVirus which is peaking at a 2% mortality rate, meanwhile, the flu is at 7.9 - 9%

[hotsteppa]

Exactly. Rush is correct on this. Way too much panic going on including the usual FR clutching pearls crew.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks and please post a link for this data and ping me.

“I just took a look a the Influenza A and B numbers on the CDC Web Page... way more scary than what we’re seeing out of this CoronaVirus which is peaking at a 2% mortality rate, meanwhile, the flu is at 7.9 - 9%.

Thanks
Dave

[virgil]

At a local high school here, a teacher told me that 200 kids were out with the flu on the same day recently. They should have just closed school.

[BushMeister]

I crunched the numbers at the CDC website for the past 9 years. The estimates are that in the US, there are an average of 28.6 million influenza cases each year, with 447,000 hospitalizations, and 37,400 deaths. That's a death rate of .13%, or 1 death for every 764 people with the flu.

COVID-19 is far more frightening in several respects. The death rate seems to be at least 2% (1 death for every 50 people with the virus, which is 15 times higher than the flu), and COVID-19 is also thought to be far more communicable than influenza. If COVID-19 becomes widespread in the US, it could have a severe impact on our economy, and completely overwhelm the healthcare system.

[Norseman]

I’m not going digging for your numbers, but everything I’ve read indicates that your numbers are two orders of magnitude off and that the flu fatality rate is around 1/10 of one percent, i.e., 0.1 percent. Check your source and see if it says 0.079 to 0.090 percent, not 7.9 to 9.0 percent.

If your numbers were right, we’d now be in worse shape than China by an order of magnitude.