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Honestly, it actually hasn't been materially worse than the flu yet. So this article's premise is basically worthless. We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's

Honestly, it actually hasn't been materially worse than the flu yet. So this article's premise is basically worthless. We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. The flu kills between 290,000 and 650,000 worldwide yearly, according to the WHO. The actual "damage" this virus has "caused", which the flu doesn't, is the economic shock of everyone being forced at once to not go out and spend. We have rightly done this to save the weaker among us, at the great expense of the masses' financial future.

javagram 7y ago
Your comparison doesn’t make sense, the same measures we are using to save lives from coronavirus also stop the spread of the flu. For instance in Hong Kong the flu season ended 3 months early because they began social distancing in January to protect themselves from coronavirus. The difference is the flu is much less deadly than coronavirus when you catch it. The only reason flu deaths are higher for the year at the moment is because the flu is already spread worldwide starting every year in flu season, which begins around September/October in the northern hemisphere, whereas Coronavirus didn’t even emerge in humans till late November/December, was highly localized to one region of China and transmission out of china was slowed by a dramatic lockdown of 750 million chinese citizens and travel restrictions placed by external countries in January. The video Paul Graham references includes many examples of people saying they aren’t worried about the disease and that even if they catch it there’s no reason to be worried, in reality we are seeing plenty of relatively healthy people who would not have been killed by flu dying from the disease.
eisa01 7y ago
It's not common for the flu to overload the healthcare system as you've seen in several places across the world. The reason it hasn't been worse is that people have acted and started to stay at home before the government issued orders Not sure when it last happened, 1918?
bvinc 7y ago
In what metric is it slowing?
nojvek 7y ago
We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. One would definitely have to take 70k number with a grain of salt. There are many deaths that have gone unreported because there weren't enough testing kits. Many countries aren't reporting deaths because their government wants to save face. Iran comes to mind. What's different about this virus is in just a span of a few months it has claimed 70k deaths. At the rate people are dying, if we just let it run its course without any social distancing (like flu runs its course), we could have millions of deaths. COVID-19 is ~10X deadlier than flu looking at the current numbers. If we just let the economy go as is, with our healthcare overwhelmed and >1% of our population dying, that would be terrible. I don't know if I want to live in such a heartless world. Remember even young people are dying albeit at a lower rate. One of my friends who did get COVID-19 explained that its not like a regular flu. The feeling of having a brick on your chest and not being able to breath is real. It really tires you and brings your worst fears to life. The worst 2 weeks of his life. That is not a description of regular flu ^

javagram 7y ago

Your comparison doesn’t make sense, the same measures we are using to save lives from coronavirus also stop the spread of the flu. For instance in Hong Kong the flu season ended 3 months early because they began social distancing in January to protect themselves from coronavirus. The difference is the flu is much less deadly than coronavirus when you catch it. The only reason flu deaths are higher for the year at the moment is because the flu is already spread worldwide starting every year in flu season, which begins around September/October in the northern hemisphere, whereas Coronavirus didn’t even emerge in humans till late November/December, was highly localized to one region of China and transmission out of china was slowed by a dramatic lockdown of 750 million chinese citizens and travel restrictions placed by external countries in January. The video Paul Graham references includes many examples of people saying they aren’t worried about the disease and that even if they catch it there’s no reason to be worried, in reality we are seeing plenty of relatively healthy people who would not have been killed by flu dying from the disease.

eisa01 7y ago

It's not common for the flu to overload the healthcare system as you've seen in several places across the world. The reason it hasn't been worse is that people have acted and started to stay at home before the government issued orders Not sure when it last happened, 1918?

bvinc 7y ago

In what metric is it slowing?

nojvek 7y ago

We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. One would definitely have to take 70k number with a grain of salt. There are many deaths that have gone unreported because there weren't enough testing kits. Many countries aren't reporting deaths because their government wants to save face. Iran comes to mind. What's different about this virus is in just a span of a few months it has claimed 70k deaths. At the rate people are dying, if we just let it run its course without any social distancing (like flu runs its course), we could have millions of deaths. COVID-19 is ~10X deadlier than flu looking at the current numbers. If we just let the economy go as is, with our healthcare overwhelmed and >1% of our population dying, that would be terrible. I don't know if I want to live in such a heartless world. Remember even young people are dying albeit at a lower rate. One of my friends who did get COVID-19 explained that its not like a regular flu. The feeling of having a brick on your chest and not being able to breath is real. It really tires you and brings your worst fears to life. The worst 2 weeks of his life. That is not a description of regular flu ^