Quote
Rams43
Question. Isn’t the morbidity rate of the annual flu around 0.1%?
No. That's a misconception promoted by some people on Fox.
First, the differences between flu numbers and covid-19 numbers. Based on this:
[
www.washingtonpost.com]
With the flu they give us
2 sets of numbers.One is actual deaths directly known to be caused by the flu, or at least with the flu as a major factor pushing someone with other conditions over the brink.
Flu actual deaths for 2018-2019: 7,172
But the medical system figures that is not a realistic number, so they have a projected number meant to capture deaths that were caused or pushed by the flu but did not get recorded as such. So they use a mathematical model to estimate it.
Estimated (not confirmed) flu deaths for 2018-2019: 26,339 to 52,664
With covid-19 the number of confirmed deaths given today is 75,670
So if you compare ACTUAL known deaths to ACTUAL known deaths, not estimated but known, it's 7+ thousand for the flu in 2 years, and 75+ thousand for covid-19 in 2 months.
What people do who try to make the flu and covid-19 look similar is take the ESTIMATED deaths from the flu and compare that to the ACTUAL deaths from covid-19.
They don't have an estimated deaths number for covid-19, that is cases of deaths caused or driven by covid-19 but not reported. But that number is HIGHER than ACTUAL (known, confirmed) deaths.
If you want an actual comparison it should be estimated deaths for the flu v. estimated deaths for covid-19.
According to a LOW estimate, the mortality rate for covid-19 as of today is said to be 1.3%. For the flu it's as you said 0.1%
That means if 100 M people get the flu, according to that number that's 100,000 deaths.
If 100 M people get covid-19, that's 1.3 M deaths.
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