The original commenter didn't call it the flu as far as I can tell. He wrote: "Is there some reason to expect that covid-19 is different in long term effects than a flu? This study is saying it causes substantial brain damage, right? What possible mechanism is there for this?".
Nowhere did he call it the flu.
> It's killed 20x more people than the flu even in the fact of pervasive society-changing mitigation strategies (all while the flu itself has all but gone extinct, remember! All that masking and distance learning actually worked!).
No. It killed 20x more people than the flu in 2020 to now. But the flu has killed far more people overall. The flu epidemic of 1918 killed 50 million people, far more than covid.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-19...
> Beyond that, nitpick with my phrasing all you like. This is HN, after all.
It's not the phrasing, you know that. You outright contradicted the CDC which makes your comment misinformation.
> It's not the flu.
In your zeal, you falsely attributed a statement/argument to a person and argued against it. In one of my philosophy classes, I learned that it was called building a straw man. It's a logical fallacy.
Your heart may be in the right place, but you aren't helping. Though I'm starting to believe the fanatics on both sides deep down want covid to ravage the world and that neither side has their heart in the right place.