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The reasoned panic over Covid-19 was never really about the individual severity of the disease or even the number of people it would kill.

It's about the rapid spike in deaths and hospitalizations happening all at the same time because of how extremely fast it spreads.

The flu spreads slow enough that our medical infrastructure can usually handle the seasonal surge of cases. Too many cases all at once overwhelms the system, leads to more deaths than necessary, and potentially has even more catastrophic effects on our economy and supply chains than we've had if too many people call in sick at the same time.

To put it physics terms, the scary thing about Covid-19 is the impact, not the absolute force. A million people dying isn't too concerning compared to other causes of death. But if they all die in a single month, that's a huge systemic problem.

I don't think it's reasonable on an individual level to panic about catching Covid-19 compared to other health risks. It's akin to thinking death by terrorism is something to be more concerned about than dying in a car crash.

And you know, we have a vaccine for yearly flus

Two weeks is tolerable. And probably we got acquainted with it. Even in the worst of cases for the influenza virus. We know what it does, we know how to cure it...

Now compare that to almost 5 weeks of that (at least from personal experience) and no clue if it could get even worse. Are you actually in a risk group without knowing? Are you currently having vitamin deficiency or immunocompromised, maybe fighting another virus? Good luck with that. Not even talking about long term damage to your neural system. Fuck that.

Without better and deeper research on it I'll try to do my best to contain the situation as much as possible. Thinking otherwise means jeopardising friends and family health.

Did that same flu spread uncontrollably even with countries completely shut down? No? Then why compare it to that and downplay it?

The amount of above-normal-deaths in countries that have taken all kinds of measures kinda proves its not an overreaction.

Exactly, this also ignores that we have treatments and a vaccine for the flu.

We should also consider that various people are affected in different ways. Some die, some recover but will have damaged organs for the rest of their lives, some recover being weak for sometime, some may recover fully with no long term side effects ( that we may know of right now?).

We need to stop thinking of death as the only statistic.

Edit: Statistics are for policies. Our individual lives and the lives of those around us are our responsibility (e.g. don't impact others' lives due to our own recklessness and unwillingness to listen to reason).

Further, this repeated refusal of Americans of not listening to lessons learned from around the world (e.g. from those of us in South East Asia) will only count against American in the longer term.

I am not fully sure what this comment is intended to mean, but if it intends to imply that covid-19 is ‘just as bad as’ a bad flu, the excess death statistics in virtually every country of the world pretty categorically show that to be untrue.

Why do people feel the need to constantly refute this or bring this argument to the table?

I think you should flip it around and realize that the flu, is actually dangerous too, it's just we're way more conditioned to accept it as part of nature and part of every day life. We don't perceive a flu to be very dangerous although statistically, it's still seems risky for certain people in the same way Covid-19 is.

One could say that if you've survived a bad case of Influenza, well you also lived through a potentially fatal health event with potentially negative long term consequences from the inflammation your body went through to overcome it.

2016-2017 flu deaths: 38,000

March 2019 - 15 Aug 2019 covid deaths: 176,000

it's not just familiarity, it's also privilege and inequality.

the better-off, some of whom control the media, feel no threat from the flu because they all have lots of psychological and social safety and good health insurance, and so we have cursory coverage of the flu, mainly to remind us to get a flu shot (and then push it out of our brains again). none of those folks are ravaged by the flu, so no panic, or coverage of heartbreaking, anecdotal cases.

but covid is different in that the better-off don't already have an easy defense. so they're spreading their fear around disproportionately, so others can act on their behalf and for their safety. if it didn't affect the better-off, we'd have none of this attention and panic (and endless fretting over masks as the de facto sign of subservience).

It's an interesting perspective for sure.

I'm in a country with a large population who cannot afford not stop work as there is no welfare for them.

I often watch those people need to go about their daily lives regardless of the Corona virus situation. Regardless of their age.

For them, getting on with it is the only option and so it does make me ask questions about the motivations behind the coverage it receives as opposed to other ongoing existential issues which have been largely put on the back burner, although they really can't afford to be.

I remember right before this kicked off, climate change truly took the center after the Australian bush fires was absolutely front and center.

Poverty dengue fever and malaria will have killed a huge amount of people this year and are hardly discussed.

Edit: I should add that it's interesting to see the difference in behavior between those from a privileged country against those who aren't in that situation. The people with money act as if this is the plague, the people without it, well they just take precautions and do their best.

right, covid is the only danger as far as the better-off are concerned, and they have the influence to dictate the response. everything else can be conveniently ignored, and they have the influence to dictate that ignorance as well. it's been like that my whole life from faux-concern for africa to 9/11 to the near and dear banks of the financial crisis.

edit: i should add that this is not an argument against taking precautions, particularly distancing, but a callout of the hypocrisy underlying this kind of asymmetric mobilization and resource allocation, which exacerbates inequality.

The parent comment should remind us that regular flu is already pretty bad in its symptoms and in the number who die from it each year. A “bad flu” can be very bad indeed: e.g., 1968, 1957, 1918. [1] Moreover, using excess deaths to quantify COVID-19 vs. regular flu, the numbers are concerning even with all our efforts to contain this coronavirus and avoid overwhelming hospitals. [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Pandemics

[2]: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...

(The heat map in [2] titled “Weekly estimated excess deaths by age group” shows excess deaths in Europe this year vs. the past three years.)

Perhaps the symptoms overlap, and many Covid patients certainly seem to have no symptoms at all. But Covid can and does make health care systems collapse, makes doctors have to pick which patient dies and which one gets the only ventilator available etc.

It's also not a flue in the sense that there are rare but serious long term effects that we haven't fully grasped yet. A small percentage of children get Kawasaki disease (or something like it).

Using the word "propaganda" implies political involvement which seems out of place.

> The only explanation I see why politicians are so eager to overreact is because most of them are of certain age and because of that belong to the risk group.

I also think shutting everything down is a politically safer move than not doing so and having to face headlines about X number of deaths in their district/town due to [politician], even if most or nearly all of these deaths are very old people who may have died from the flu this year or next year anyways.

A relatively high percentage of people getting it require hospitalisation. It's not the bubonic plague, but unchecked, it will overwhelm any medical system and the death toll will be much higher (it's already at least an order of magnitude more deadly than the flu).

It's not just about one person's flu-like symptoms, which may make them one of the "lucky" one who can stay home and don't require more care (although read other testimonies in this thread because some experienced way worse than your bout of flu). It's also about people with other medical needs not being taken care of because of an overwhelmed system.

There are only so many available beds, respirators and medical staff. There have been plenty of examples of that in the past months, in Europe, in South America, in NYC, in Wuhan even, where people are left to die at home or in hallways because there are not enough resources to care for them.

They don't just die of COVID, they die of cancer, they die of heart attacks and accidents that would otherwise be non-fatal when cared for in time.

We're getting better prepared, but not everywhere. Under-estimation is the danger here. Saying it's no worse than flu is not true. It is a lot more dangerous and insidious. It kills more and, left unchecked, will stress any local medical system to the point that even more will die. Many of those who get it will also end up with years of health issues.

You may easily survive getting it, maybe even without symptoms, but are you OK with spreading it to your family, your neighbors, your colleagues, and their families?

It may also affects older people but the original SARS virus -a cousin- affected mostly young healthy adults, with a much higher death rate. Who knows how this thing will mutate and how it will change if left completely unchecked to evolve in the general population.

My wife had COVID-19 in April with a medical precondition. She was in bed for three weeks. Symptoms were completely different from flu, mostly just feeling completely exhausted and weak. She went back to work after about a month, and now her health is back 90% I would say.

A few year agao I had a bad case of flu. Temperature rose again after a few days, which indicated a bacterial superinfection, which got treated with antibiotics. I was back at work after two weeks. But I have the feeling that these two weeks had changed by body. It took me about half a year to fully recover, i would say.

We often discuss who was hit worse, my wife with COVID-19 or me with the flu. Probably my wife, but she had her medical precondition, so we have not come to a final conclusion.

These two statements don't really go well together, do they?

> I am not a person who underestimates Covid-19 and take all the precautions that are required.

> So I wonder if a lot of the fear of Covid is based more on propaganda and social panic than on actual health risks.

You can inform yourself here about the differences to a normal flu: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm

I don't like how people point out anecdotal evidence in this thread as if it meant something.

Your CDC link is not that different than the OP's statement "So yes, Covid-19 sounds kind of like that bad flu. It is bad, but 2 years ago we would just call it "a bad flu"."

From your link:

- People at risk: Both COVID-19 and flu illness can result in severe illness and complications. 1) The risk of complications for healthy children is higher for flu compared to COVID-19. 2) However, infants and children with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk for both flu and COVID-19.

- Complications: 1) Both COVID-19 and flu can result in complications, including... 2) Additional complications associated with COVID-19 can include: Blood clots in the veins and arteries of the lungs, heart, legs or brain. Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C)

Is Covid worse? Yes, but there are a lot of similarities between the two and for healthy young children, the flu is a bigger risk, but for children with underlying medical condition, Covid is a bigger risk.

I am a person who understands the difference between personal opinion, social norm and rules.

I understand that we do not know enough about Covid-19 yet and that the best way to act right now is by taking necessary precaution to reduce spreading the virus. In this case I accept that my personal opinion is less relevant than the social and political decisions and thus I stick to the rules and recommendations of my local government. I am still allowed to have an opinion on things and a different point of view than the politics and most of society, though.

You really blame people for writing anecdotes on an article that is nothing else than an anecdote?

People die from flu every year. Flu can be bad at any time. I myself had a bad flu back in January, with fever, chills, and loss of appetite for a few days, and a cough that lingered for weeks. I'm just glad I got it in January and not in March. At the worst of the flu I just kept hoping I wouldn't develop pneumonia, because pneumonia is actually deadly. I would've been worried out of my mind if I had those symptoms in March or later.

Pneumonia that comes with flu is usually a bacterial superinfection that can be treated quite well with antibiotics. If you have the flu, your temperature goes down after two or three days, but then raises again, you probably have a bacterial superinfection and should consult a doctor.

These bacterial superinfections also caused most of the deaths from the Spanish Flu. At that time antibiotics did not exist.

You had a bad flu, once and that make you think flu is as bad as covid-19?

This isn't just one bad case, it's millions of bad cases. There's no flu that killed that many people in that short of time, ever.

From a quick research, it seems like the flu kill between 12k and 61k people annually in the US. The US is now near 3x the worst estimate and the year is still young, and that's with all the precaution the US is taking against the virus.

Personally I hope that this pandemic also makes us improve how we deal with the flu season. Wearing a mask at the supermarket during a season ins't that bad. Seeing more disinfection too isn't bad. More remote works too.

    > So yes, Covid-19 sounds kind of like that bad flu. It is bad, but 2 years ago we would just call it "a bad flu".

Well, there's another side to that coin:

"The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide—about one-third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans."

Yes, indeed a “bad flu”. One that sends 10% of its victims to the hospital, half of these to ICU and half of this latter group to the morgue.

And this, assuming a functioning health infrastructure, otherwise you get many many more ending in the last group.

That’s pretty bad, I’d take it - literally - dead seriously.