Influenza kills more people than the coronavirus so everyone is overreacting, right?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Wrong — and here’s why

Coronavirus. It’s just like the flu, isn’t it?

Hundreds of thousands of people die of the flu every year, and people need to calm down, some say. Everyone should wash their hands for 20 seconds, elbow bump, stop buying face masks because they don’t protect against the virus, note that airplane air is filtered 20 to 30 times an hour, avoid cruise ships, and just relax — right?

That appears to be the accumulated advice of exasperated Americans on Twitter and Facebook FB, 3.257% in recent days who despair at the long lines at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods AMZN, 3.355% (where people apparently have been stocking up on oat milk) and the panic buying and empty shelves at Costco COST, 0.156%. “Toilet paper is golden in an apocalypse,” one customer told MYNorthwest.com

Studies, however, suggest the differences between the flu and coronavirus are more nuanced than some people suggest. In fact, health professionals point out important distinctions between the COVID-19 illness and other viral sicknesses like the flu. For a start, there is no vaccine for COVID-19 and it could take many months or years to get one to market. What’s worse, doctors fear the virus will mutate.

-more-

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-vs-the-flu-its-just-like-other-viruses-and-we-should-go-about-our-normal-business-right-wrong-heres-why-2020-03-09?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo

[onecaliberal]

1. Fuck no

[Captain Stern]

2. "Only" about 16,000 people in the US have died from the flu this year.

The problem here is the use of the word 'only'. 16,000 people is a lot of people.

And all of those people died even though we have vaccines for the flu, and do pretty much everything we can to protect people from it. Personally, I'd like to see us do everything we can to keep this coronavirus from killing anywhere near that many people.

I think sometimes we tend to minimize the importance of a lot of people dying if they don't all die at the exact same time, and same place, even if it's from the same cause.

After all 'only' about 3,000 died during the 9/11 attacks. But we spent billions, and forever changed how we travel by air, to try to prevent that sort of thing from happening again.

[abqtommy]

3. Just playing the fatality numbers game tell the difference. I've read that the rate for the

seasonal flu is "below 1%" compared to a 3.57% average rate for COVID-19 and numbers that just go up or down depending on the source. For me it's more important to be prepared to survive than it is to calculate the odds but we can tip the odds in our favor...