Is there a baby way, perhaps a fifth grade way to explain what is the difference among viruses.
The symptoms, the areas of the body they attack, the length of the illness, fever, body aches, etc.
Seems as though the symptoms are all the same, so what gives them their respective names and fatality rate. There doesn’t look like there is much distinction.
Except for the way the people are supposed to behave...like now, which I never have had to do...ever.
I suggest that regarding various diseases’ symptoms you just go to the CDC website. Basically, COVID-19 attacks most dangerously deep in the lower lungs and makes acutely ill or kills at least as many (likely more) of the people it infects as the average flu. In critical cases it appears to often trigger an immune system overreaction worse than the disease itself. As with the flu, other problems a person has usually factor in, in severe cases. (Diabetes, smoking or other lung damage, compromised immune system, age, etc.) For younger people without other health issues, COVID-19 may not be much worse than a common cold. However, a great many people do have “other issues”. 30% of the US population is obese, for example. Diabetes and pre-diabetes is fairly common. And so on. Additionally, like a serious or critical case of flu, often secondary problems are induced that can be very dangerous or damaging to the weakened victim. (My younger brother’s flu a few years back lead to necrotic pneumonia that destroyed 2/3 of his lungs. He barely survived his stay in the ICU on a ventilator.)
Beyond that, I’ll let others delve further into the symptoms / illness itself. There is a great deal of information in the “Daily” coronavirus threads on FR. Check them out.
Where COVID-19 really differs from flus is its contagiousness. Being “novel” (new), we have no vaccine. This is a double whammy: More people exposed to a given viral load get sick, and more of the sick are sicker. (Even if a flu vaccine “misses” somewhat in a given year, it usually aids the immune system in fighting the flu to some extant.)
COVID-19 appears to remain infectious longer on various surfaces (skin, doorknobs, keypads, clothes, etc., than flu viruses do. This abets its spread.
Perhaps nastiest of all, COVID-19 can be spread by infected persons who show mild or no symptoms. (Infected but no symptoms = “asymptomatic”.) Flu can do this too, but usually for only a short period before the victim feels like crap and goes to bed. COVID-19 victims have been shown to be unknowing “spreaders” for 3 days. (I suspect we’ll eventually see documentation of spread for 5 days or more from people who thought they just had a very mild cold.)
All this makes COVID-19 considerably more infectious than the flu, which means that unmitigated (uncorralled) it can lead to very rapid rises in the numbers of serious and critical cases. This is on top of existing needs. As was seen in Italy, for example, there may not be enough hospital capacity to take care of all the potentially fatal cases.