It's not the same time. The flu has been with us for ages and it mutates and returns every year slightly different so that's why you need different vaccine every year. Here's CDC's reports on flu cases this season:From the CDC:
I don't see how covid19 is as infectious when in roughly the same time it's no where near those number of infections. Also you have to factor that people are getting vaccinated for flu and generally we know how to manage it better and treat it much much better.
It didn't start at the same time as the COVID-19 virus. By that graphic they started charting it in the 40th week of the year. This is September 23-September 29. In other words it has had 6 months to spread already and at the moment there are 242,330 cases. COVID started spreading in late January and epidemic growth goes by exponential curve. Meaning it jumps disproportionately later in the curve. (you can see the same for the flu, but with not as steep of a curve before it tops out). The US is currently at 143K cases of COVID and it has been spreading for only about 2 months. It probably will surpass the flu by the end of the week and blow it out of the water by the end of the season. And this is with the flu having 4 months of headstart. This one is MUCH more infectious and much more dangerous.
Also keeping in mind a large amount of the cases were from wuhan where things were very very poorly handled at first. The rest of China hardly got infected and death rates were fairly low outside one city. Also keeping in mind that many countries don't report flu deaths if there was any other factor. If you applied that same stipulation to this covid19 I'm pretty sure deaths would be reduced a lot. Italy reported 99% of their deaths had other factors. Not sure what other countries are though.
This isn't too show that covid19 isn't serious but to show the flu is. We don't need another virus to overwhelm our systems. Hopefully we can delay this and the flu cases from spreading as long as possible to find cures and vaccines. Plus spread the load at the hospitals to reduce deaths.
Agree, the flu is by no means a disease to be underestimated, but countries already do a ton to prevent epidemics of the flu - they already have anti-virals that are somewhat effective and they already have a vaccine that they renew every year(again - because it mutates and slightly different strain circulates in the population every year), they already close schools when there is a jump in cases, etc.. In several years we might have similar success with handling COVID-19... we might have effective anti-virals and we might have a vaccine(although, from what I've read the 18 months is really a very optimistic timeline - usually it takes in the realm of about 10 years to develop a really good vaccine for a new virus. So yeah, some time in the future this might be as dangerous as the flu, right now it's NOT.
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