Number of coronavirus cases and deaths in US pale in comparison to seasonal flu | Hacker News Reader

Number of coronavirus cases and deaths in US pale in comparison to seasonal flu

abcnews.go.com

2 pointsstakkur8 comments

"The growing number of lab-confirmed cases in the U.S. at this point still pales in comparison to the seasonal flu, which kills an estimated 12,000 to 61,000 people per year and affects between 9 million and 45 million people in the country, according to the CDC."

Misleading title... bordering on disinformation.

"Still, experts warn that the COVID-19 shouldn't be downplayed or compared to a bad case of the flu. Instead, the respiratory disease is more akin to severe pneumonia, and in serious cases, patients experiencing difficulty breathing have been hospitalized and put on ventilators."

What specifically is misleading or not factual about it? It's comparing number of cases and deaths, not the virus itself.

because it pales in comparison now, but it's still spreading. What value is there in a snapshot measurement of something that is actively increasing at an exponential rate??

The sentence chosen for the post title reads completely different if you read the following sentence in the article.

look at the other top level comment. the quote includes the very important qualifier "at this point" which was omitted in your post title.

How would it be possible to quantify data from the future, exactly? Or is it necessary to say 'this doesn't include unknown data from the future'?

Repeating the quote: "experts warn that the COVID-19 shouldn't be .. compared to a bad case of the flu". Contrasting the victim counts literally implies the comparison this article warns against.

>>Contrasting the victim counts literally implies the comparison this article warns against

The title is a comparison of the counts of cases and deaths, not the severity or impact of the illness. It's...data. And by the way, those people who are dead from influenza likely count just as much as those dead from coronavirus.

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