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In the US, there's been 172k death in half a year for Covid. And if using the worst case data for flu season, it's 61k per year. So it's looking like for a full

In the US, there's been 172k death in half a year for Covid. And if using the worst case data for flu season, it's 61k per year. So it's looking like for a full year, it'll be 344k death for Covid versus 61k death for the flu. That makes Covid 5.6 times more deadly than the flu. But, the Covid numbers here are from a complete lockdown, where people are social distancing, wearing masks, schools are closed, everyone is working from home if possible, etc. And even with those level of precautions, it is at best 5.6 times deadlier. That's why the estimate from the CDC is that Covid is 10 times deadlier than the flu. The other thing is, this only measures immediate death. But there are unknown long term risk. Other type of SARS virus are known to cause long term issues to people that recovered from it. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be the case for Covid but it could, and we don't know yet. The last problem is mutations are possible. There's already one known mutation that makes it even more contagious. And the more the virus spreads, the more likely it mutates as well. So containment is important for that as well. Now, that's the risk of it from the data today. You can decide that it is a risk worth taking or not. That's kind of a personal thing. But it is absolutely much higher than the flu.

thekyle 6y ago
You can't just compare absolute death totals like that. We have a vaccine for the flu which reduces the infection rate. What if the reason COVID-19 has 5.6 times more deaths is because it has 5.6 times more infections.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  In the 2017-2018 flu season (one of the worse, which had the estimated 61k deaths in the US) infected an estimated 45 million people in the US; that's roughly in the middle of the range of the number that have caught COVID-19 so far (30-50 million the last I heard; note this is an estimate of total cases, not the confirmed 5.7 million cases, but so is the 45 million). So our current understanding is that COVID-19 is both more deadly and more infectious.
- didibus 6y ago
  That's fine, when we say it's estimated to be 10 times deadlier, it isn't in terms of you being 10 times more likely to die from it than the flu if you catch it, but that Covid let loose in our population will result in 10 times more deaths. This does take into account infection rates, it's absolutely relevant and it's the big reason for Covid being deadlier, because it is more contagious. So from the data, we see that with social distancing, lock down, and all that, it still infects and kills 5.6 times more people than the flu does every year given the measures taken for the flu, which is to have some amount of the population vaccinated. Thus assumed that without any protections, it would be even worse, possibly killing around 620k people per year. That would put it above cancer and up there with hearth disease as the number one cause of death per year. And that's precisely why we're hoping for a vaccine. So that we can hopefully get the infections down and stop it's crazy contagion rate to manageable numbers that result on much less deaths per year, and doesn't force us to continue with the more challenging measures for limiting the spread of the virus.

thekyle 6y ago

You can't just compare absolute death totals like that. We have a vaccine for the flu which reduces the infection rate. What if the reason COVID-19 has 5.6 times more deaths is because it has 5.6 times more infections.

saalweachter 6y ago
In the 2017-2018 flu season (one of the worse, which had the estimated 61k deaths in the US) infected an estimated 45 million people in the US; that's roughly in the middle of the range of the number that have caught COVID-19 so far (30-50 million the last I heard; note this is an estimate of total cases, not the confirmed 5.7 million cases, but so is the 45 million). So our current understanding is that COVID-19 is both more deadly and more infectious.
didibus 6y ago
That's fine, when we say it's estimated to be 10 times deadlier, it isn't in terms of you being 10 times more likely to die from it than the flu if you catch it, but that Covid let loose in our population will result in 10 times more deaths. This does take into account infection rates, it's absolutely relevant and it's the big reason for Covid being deadlier, because it is more contagious. So from the data, we see that with social distancing, lock down, and all that, it still infects and kills 5.6 times more people than the flu does every year given the measures taken for the flu, which is to have some amount of the population vaccinated. Thus assumed that without any protections, it would be even worse, possibly killing around 620k people per year. That would put it above cancer and up there with hearth disease as the number one cause of death per year. And that's precisely why we're hoping for a vaccine. So that we can hopefully get the infections down and stop it's crazy contagion rate to manageable numbers that result on much less deaths per year, and doesn't force us to continue with the more challenging measures for limiting the spread of the virus.