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Comment by sam_goody | Hacker News Reader

I have seen many articles with similar thoughts - that the death rate of Covid is < 1%, similar or less than the flu and other well known viruses.

But, anecdotally, two close associates have died of Covid, and a neighbor is now on life support. May he get better soon!

I (fortunately) have not heard of anyone even being put into a life-threatening position by Flu. Asking a few friends, their experiences match mine, though the victims differ.

Can someone with more understanding explain - are we just the exceptions, or is there some reason that the anecdotal evidence is so far different from the numbers?

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Every year about 295-650k die of respiratory issues with flu as a complication. That means on average a 30-year-old knows about 200 times the people who have died of the flu then Covid.

So you must certainly be an exception. Personally, I don't know anyone who knows anyone who's even been hospitalized.

ref: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(...

Common flu does not have a ~1% CFR. More like 0.1%. So those articles are (deliberately?) wrong. If you mean "less than the 1918 flu", then yes you're right.

One more data point here, I too do not know of anyone who has died (or even been hospitalized) with influenza, despite my having a large social circle including plenty of elderly. I don't know of anyone who has died of covid yet, but our county has only had single digits confirmed cases yet. One of which is a well known farmer in the area, and he is hospitalized currently.

Again maybe just an anecdotal outlier but I know quite a few people that have died of the flu, from a couple kids when I was young to some of my elderly relatives.

Under 1% is still far above the flu.

And note that parts of Italy have excess mortality of 1% of the population even though most of them aren't listed as Covid-19 deaths.

Do you have links to data for excess mortality? I’m struggling to find any localised data.

Here is country wide mortality data: https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html

Less than 1% is still much higher than the the flu. But the flu kills tens of thousands per year in the US alone, so it's fairly common.

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