Somewhere between 80,000 and 116,000 Americans died from the Asian flu and yes, I did know someone who died from it...a kid I went to school with.
There is a chart out by CDC or others today that shows the rate, by age group, ranging to 20% mortality. That is not the flu.
There are many ways to look at the mortality rates, very interesting data. Would be better to have worldwide transparency, but interesting just the same.
Knowing that it is just down the road from me, makes me pay attention. It is abstract now, but might not be next week.
I suspect nowhere near 80,000 Americans will die from COVID-19. The reason the casualties will be lower is because it is a more dangerous virus, and we know that. More contagious, higher mortality. Because of that, significant efforts will be made to prevent uncontrolled spread. Individuals increasing personal awareness of what they are touching, washing hands more frequently, and eventually keeping kids home from school, working from home, avoiding crowds, buses, trains, planes, etc. At higher levels, public health workers will gather data, try to track infections and contact people at risk. Local, state and federal governments will take more extreme cautions when required like publishing information on clusters, ordering quarantines, closing or ordering closure of schools, public and private facilities, transportation, etc in areas with uncontrolled spread.
Because of these things, assuming they are effective, there will be far, far fewer infections than something like the flu and far fewer deaths. Think of it this way; if you hear a couple kids that go to your child’s school have the flu, you don’t keep your kid home for weeks until it is proven everyone is healthy. If you find out a couple kids have COVID-19, you obvious keep your kids home. In fact, you probably won’t have a choice, as the whole school will be closed. Human nature is to avoid dangerous things. Treating it like “just the flu” would be a disaster, but that will not happen because we know what it is. If it DOES kill such large numbers, we will have failed at several levels.