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How exactly is Coronavirus more dangerous than flu when in a 4 month period, flu kills an average of 175000 more people?


So far, flu has a higher average seasonal death total.

World Health Organization estimates that the flu kills 290,000 to 650,000 people worldwide per year. Averages out to 470,000 deaths globally a year.

https://www.health.com/condition/cold-flu-sinus/how-many-people-die-of-the-flu-every-year

Flu season runs about 8 months. In the US it runs from October through May, so I am guessing the duration is similar everywhere even if the months differ.

Let's say we have had coronavirus going worldwide since December. That's about 60,000 deaths over 4 months worldwide.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR3TfwEmUFWa0EDsHsAspRLMFzhI7Zuy0yFnhXOj4cntgWdbIbinkvcA6jQ#countries

Flu season is 8 months and in half of that, 4 months, an average of 235,000 people worldwide die of flu. In 4 months, Coronavirus, at 60,000 deaths, is 175,000 less than an average 4 month period of flu season.

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It's not only about how many... but who.

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Well, coronavirus kills mainly the very old and those with existing health conditions. Flu kills basically the same demographic but is also a larger threat to babies and young children.

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Severity of illness is dependent on the size of the dose. Not just the existing condition of the infected person.

The virus is aggressive and a larger proportion of patients require ICU treatment, which is in finite supply. The spread of the disease is starting to push health care to its limits in some areas. Meaning people that wouldn't ordinarily die of flu might not receive the treatment they require and die.

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The flu typically operates *without* social distancing in place.

The flu also has a much lower mortality rate.

Covid 19 has much more potential.

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The 60K deaths take into account the period when social distancing was relatively uncommon.

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The flu also has a much lower mortality rate.

Maybe, or maybe not.

If you calculate the flu mortality rate using hospitalized confirmed cases this year in US, flu would have about 5% mortality rate. In that country, for example, by February 5th (two months ago), the flu 2019-2020 had caused 10,000 deaths and almost 200,000 people to be hospitalized.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/the-flu-has-already-killed-10000-across-us-as-world-frets-over-coronavirus.html

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The flu infects hundreds of millions every year.

Corona would be very bad if it infected people on that scale.

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They say the actual number of coronavirus infected is much, much higher than records show because most have slight or no symptoms.

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I guess it could be a problem of overdiagnosis.

If you decided to test for flu you would have hundreds of thousands of cases of flu. If you decided to hospitalize flu cases with mild symptoms, that would collapse hospitals. Collapsed hospitals would cause a serious public health problem (since they become collapsed for every illness in the book, not just for flu) and that would lead to hysteria panic. And that would be only flu, you know, common seasonal flu.

In Italy, the additional number of deaths during the coronavirus outbreak is several times higher than the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus.
https://www.corriere.it/politica/20_marzo_26/the-real-death-toll-for-covid-19-is-at-least-4-times-the-official-numbers-b5af0edc-6eeb-11ea-925b-a0c3cdbe1130.shtml

Collapsed hospitals kill people, not because of the coronavirus, but because every other illness will increase its mortality if the health system is collapsed.

Check what has happened with Brett Crozier and the USS Theodore Roosevelt. That's not the Diamond Princess with their 70+ years old passengers, this is a ship filled with young people. The expected number of deaths in the USS Theodore Roosevelt was zero. Now you have quite a serious problem when there was none. And now you have a hundred people from the crew occupying places in hospitals that they shouldn't.

However, no politician dares to talk about this big elephant in the room. The media would destroy him, calling him mass murdered or anything like that.

And that brings another very serious problem: could this be the mainstream media new toy? Every year, you have the flu season. You could collapse the health system by publishing constant news about every flu death. That could become a pretty dangerous toy to take down governments.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/03/31/i-was-thinking-this-but-he-said-it-better/

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Communist China has no freedom of the press. Yet they still locked their cities down, build emergency hospitals in 10 days, etc.

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China stopped being communist quite a few years ago.

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That's Republic of China. Both are/is one China. Yes, it's confusing.

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I'm not talking about Taiwan. China has been capitalist for a few years now.

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Mainland China is still communist. They're just have loads of money now. What? communists can't be rich? Rich countries can't be communist?

It's irrelevant tho'. The fact is China, communist or otherwise, don't have freedom of the press. Yet they still locked their cities down, build emergency hospitals, etc. So your notion that this situation was the mainstream media's new dangerous toy is baseless.

I just said "Communist China" so it was not mistaken to "the other but the same China," aka Taiwan. Which is acceptable in geopolitical lingo.

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A communist system is quite a specific one and China doesn't qualify. You have private property and a free market there, labeling it as communist doesn't make any sense.

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Fine. Whatever. Communist schomunist.

The point was that this toy thing of the mainstream media doesn't make any sense. There.

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I have a Taiwanese friend and if you ever want to piss her off, just ask her which part of China she comes from.

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Oh I know, right. My wife is a Taiwanese.

The other guy up there was just being nitpicky and out of topic.

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WTF??? I'm not being "nitpicky and petty". We're not talking about one system that it's a communist system with a couple a minor technical variations, we're talking about a system that it's nowhere near a communist one.

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Lalalalala can't hear you...

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Lol, then you understand even more than me. My friend is the one that told me my ‘Chinese’ name was Wan King without realising what that meant.

Also, whenever we’re at a party, if there’s someone that’s never met her before, I always get them to ask the ‘so which part if China are you from?’ She always flashes me the ‘you bastard’ look, lol.

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Yeah, you've told me that. Now you're forever known as Wan King here in Moviechat lol.

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As long as I can raise a smile.

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Long live Wan King!

Seriously though, Wan King is a real name and there are lots of people named Wan King. Litte did they know...

Anyway, a Korean friend of mine has the name Yu Suck. True story.

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My whole married life (my wife is Indonesian) is filled with amusing misunderstandings, lol.

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If you do it right, you'll raise more than that.

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Maybe an eyebrow?

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Now that would be kinky!

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Maybe it has a little something to do with the mortality rate? Italy has over a 10% mortality rate with COVID-19. The factors involved are a large elderly population, an overworked treatment system and the lack of an early social isolation mandate. Even with all of our preventative measures in the US we're over a 2% mortality rate.

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The mortality rate is unknown right now. That number is based in the confirmed cases, but the confirmed cases are only a small percentage of the real cases.

If you calculated the flu mortality rate the same way, the mortality would be similar.

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If it's unknown how can you also say it would be similar? That's a sign of reaching and bias.

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Read it again. If you still can't understand it, I'll explain it to you.

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He is saying that most doctors and scientists are reporting that in almost all cases, with most countries doing testing of only systematic people, the actual number of infected persons is easily 20 times higher than current reporting figures and is probably much higher than that. When an antibody test is created and used in any given population after the epidemic is over, an accurate death rate vs ACTUAL infected will be found. When this occurs the death rate will be lower than it is without correct figures.

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Exactly.

Without a serological test (the one for antibodies), if we calculated flu mortality this year in US (for example), it would be about 5% (10,000 deaths from 200,000 confirmed cases by February 5th).

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/the-flu-has-already-killed-10000-across-us-as-world-frets-over-coronavirus.html

Of course, it's known it's much lower, since the number of real cases is much higher than the symptomatic confirmed cases. So nobody says that this year the flu has a 5% mortality rate. However, this is exactly what they're doing in the case of the coronavirus.

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In my thinking, Covid 19’s danger is that it’s 3-4 times more infectious therefore can overload healthcare systems, especially without a vaccine.

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Agreed. And that overloaded healthcare system can be much more lethal than the virus itself.

The hospitalization should be restricted to severe and critic cases, cases that really need to be in a hospital. But nobody is gonna dare to make that call. The deaths caused by the coronavirus are easy to identify, but the deaths caused because the health system was overloaded are impossible to identify, even if they're probably more.

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That's not what your article says. It says that there were 19 million confirmed cases and 180,000 hospitalizations.

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Coronavirus is more dangerous because it is new. Nobody is immune to it and there is no vaccine or drugs for treatment.

The world-wide confirmed death of COVID-19 is not as high as flu yet, thanks to WHO's repeat updating warnings and the measures each country took to fight this Pandemic. Can you imagine what it would be if every city around the world become epicenters like WuHan and Lombardy? Lockdown not only helps to reduce it's spreading to other cities but also helps to reduce death in the epicenter since the CDC could concentrate its medical resources there to fight the disease.

Flu season is not over yet and COVID-19 adds additional risk to the public health. Let's hope both regular people and the government start taking Flu more seriously for now on, also better preparing for the second wave or next pandemic.

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You are correct, it's very much like the flu. The only difference is that there's no vaccine, so the number of people who are infected with corona and die from it could turn out to be higher.

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no vaccine, no herd immunity, high contagion factor, high lethality

equals pandemic

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It depends on what you consider a "high lethality".

Except for irregularity, the seasonal flu also fits the criteria of a pandemic.

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lethality at least 10x previous viral pandemics

this is not a normal pandemic - something far worse, for the reasons given

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Have you even checked the stats for other pandemics???

We can't tell yet what the mortality rate of the coronavirus will be eventually. WHO says right now it's 3.4% (others put it at 1.5%), which is nothing compared to SARS with 10%, MERS wigh 35% and ebola with over 50%.

As of now, corona has claimed around 62.000 lives, while the seasonal flu can claim up to 646.000 lives a year worldwide. Just to put things in perspective.

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we're only a few months into this thing. the other outbreaks were far, far, far less widespread than novel corona.

i'm not even sure what you are arguing about.

when was the last time you were confined to your house for weeks, likely months, to come ?

there are aspects of this particular pandemic that are, indeed, novel.

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And just like the flu, the coronavirus will most likely slowly fade away once the temperature rises. The stats for the flu only take in account the winter months.

I'm not sure what YOU are arguing about. I agreed with OP that the numbers for the coronavirus are not shocking compared to those for the common flu. Emphasizing it's a pandemic doesn't really change anything.

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1. you ignore the lack of immunity in the population, which is, again, novel.
2. you assume this will likely fade away, and even if so, not re-occur with renewed vigor when conditions are right.

there is no good reason to assume this situation is business-as-usual, or comparable to other flu outbreaks. are we not living in a fundamentally altered state ? has that not gotten your attention ?

I don't care what word is used. you seem to have glommed in on that as something to worry about. i'm worried about the sick, dying, dead, and all of us subject to those hazards going forward - whatever definition of the phenomenon you'd care to use.

i merely pointed out some of the unique hazards of the situation and you started quibbling with me.

anyway, that's all I'll have to say on the matter. wishing you, me & everyone else continued health.

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I didn't ignore anything at all. Sure, lack of immunity also plays a role in higher numbers, but we're most likely already building it up (it's WAY too premature to assume there's NO herd immunity). And I never said it wouldn't re-occur. The flu pops up every year, but no drama about that.

Those things can all be "novel", but it doesn't change the statistics which aren't amazingly alarming compared to the common flu.

I'm quibbling? You're the one insisting on calling it a novel, extraordinary pandemic as if that proves the severity of the illness. I'm actually the one saying that the word doesn't matter, just look at the stats.

Take care and maybe go for a short walk outside to get some fresh air.

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"As of now, corona has claimed around 62.000 lives"

... doubling every few days.

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Wow, stop lying. Right now, it's 69.000. It's NOT going to be 124.000 tomorrow or even the day after that.

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Well, you're obviously the dumb one here if you expect people to understand that you're referring to a period of almost a week, when the expression "a few days" is more commonly used to mean 3-4 days. If you mean 6 days, then say 6 days. In this case it makes a huge difference.

Anyway...

On March 31st the death toll was 42.000, so you're not correct about the worldwide death rate doubling at 6 days either.

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye?" – Matthew 7:3

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Days is certainly not "tomorrow" in any language. So stop it with the lying accusation. I don't know my message was deleted. I guess moderators aren't too bright either.

April 5th total was 64 400. Go back 6 days (March 30th) and it's 33 574. Go back another 6 days (March 24th) and it's 16 363. March 18th was 7891. Now, are you gonna nitpick and say it's not 6 days but 6.xxxx? You're just arguing for the sake of it.

I get my data here: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

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Wow! 😐

I made that comment about the death toll being 62.000 2 days ago. So "tomorrow" would be 4 days later. Funny how you accuse others of being dumb.

This website shows the progression very nicely:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/

And you're exaggerating for the sake of it. Saying the death toll doubles every "few days", sounds much more dramatic, of course, than saying it doubles every week.

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You should be more clear yourself then. That 69 000 number was irrelevant.

It doubles under a week. Are you happy now? Saying "days" is still accurate.

It's nothing like the flu. It takes longer to develop symptoms, longer to recover and it's more deadly. Put all that together and it's much worse than the flu.

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That 69.000 number was not irrelevant, it showed that if that's the number after 2 days, there's no way the death toll will have doubled in 4 days. Especially since growth is slowing down at the moment.

There's no vaccine and no immunity yet, so no surprise it's more deadly than the flu. Everybody is giving a different eventual global fatality rate at the moment, from less than 1% to as high as 4%. Unfortunate, but not alarmingly high. SARS, MERS and ebola are far higher.

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The higher (and quicker) the lethality, the less likely an illness is to spread widely and become a pandemic.

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Tell that to jriley, because according to them the supposedly high lethality of the coronavirus is what makes it a pandemic.

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This is either the 3rd or 4th time we've had this conversation.

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It would be nice to think you enjoyed it more each time, but I'm guessing you think it either got worse or stayed the same.

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I'm going with stayed the same but became increasingly tedious as a result.

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