> So why does ~25,000 deaths one year goes practically unnoticed, yet less then 5,000 deaths send the economy into a death spiral and the government to essentia

> So why does ~25,000 deaths one year goes practically unnoticed, yet less then 5,000 deaths send the economy into a death spiral and the government to essentially strip all rights from the population? Because Covid is not comparable to the 2018 influenza in terms of how many ICU cases it produces and how quickly. The common flu is also far less infectious. That combination is the problem. The 2013-2014 flu season in Italy didn't collapse their healthcare system with intensive care patients. 10-15% of the people testing positive for Covid are ending up requiring intensive care. If four million people with flu in the US in 2018 were put into intensive care (much less just during the span of the flu season), it would have collapsed the US healthcare system rapidly. It would take less than a month of that onslaught to collapse the US healthcare system entirely. The majority of US ICU beds are routinely being used (meaning there would have been very little spare capacity at all for the four million flu ICU patients). In that scenario, with four million ICU patients from the 2018 influenza, you're going to see several million deaths.