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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Thousands of people die everyday during bad flu epidemics like 2018 when 80,000 Americans died over a ~6 month flu season.

We didn’t keep kids from school, we didn’t panic when hospitals were overwhelmed, we didn’t shut down businesses.

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That many people are dying a month right now. It’s nearly an order of magnitude different situation.

> when 80,000 Americans died over a ~6 month flu season

Where are you getting that number? CDC estimates 27k:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

which puts it below current COVID numbers by a big chunk.

> We didn’t keep kids from school

At this point schools are largely closed because there are too many teachers out sick to teach effectively. There isn't a particularly simple answer here.

Weird, here's another CDC source that cites a non-finalized estimate of 61k (45k - 95k)

The lower bound itself is higher than the 27k estimate.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

Flu season doesn't lead to insanely high excess death rates, and overwhelm hospital capacity, making things like biking now a much higher risk activity as any visit to a hospital due to a broken bone or something is far more likely to result in a lack of proper treatment. That we are in 2022 and still discussing this leads me to, very grimly, believe that we are in some period of hyper-darwinism, where this train of thought will only go away once the virus has incapacitated/killed those who seem to not understand what the word "excess deaths" means.

Yes, maybe after that it will come for people who can't tell plural from singular. I am all for grammatical punishments of the most grim variety.

Willful missing of the point. Also not implying that the outcome is anything approaching a good outcome, just a grim Darwinian one, where thinking responding to covid in any way to improve life expectancies is just some sign of weakness. Our further atomization and slide towards a individualist society will leave us living shorter, less collaborative lives where we will try and treat cancer with a juice fast or some nonsense, instead of transforming our fundamental relationship to healthcare away from a not-for-profit one. But one is something a consumer can do, the other requires collective action, and that's only for the hysterical weaklings to dream of, so instead we will just virtue-signal our way towards dying at 30 on a bowflex machine after taking unregulated gym substances or whatever in a failed attempt to steel ourselves against our lack of societal fabric and collective ability to combat anything.

Feel free to hide under a rock avoiding covid while ignoring all the other risks you take everyday.

Hospitals hit capacity during flu seasons - did you wear a mask everyone, keep your kids home, work from home and cancel all travel plans? I’ll bet you didn’t even know they were at capacity.

I’m vaccined, I’m moving on with life.

Risk mitigation whilst hospitals are at capacity? Nah, gotta live my life! Otherwise they might perceive me as weak-willed, and more important than my continued existence is to ensure I am not perceived as a weakling! Anything else is others being hysterical! Fuck doctors, am I right!

Hospitals hit capacity during flu season all the time.

Did you stay at home, keep your kids from school and cancel all travel plans last flu season when hospitals got overwhelmed?

You probably didn’t even know they were overwhelmed, did you?

Last flu season a bunch of my family friends did not die from flu, nor did any relative suffer long term consequences from flu.

My coworker from 5 years back died yesterday. He is 2 years younger than me. I am not even 40.

So it doesn't affect you so those tens of thousands dead from the flu don't matter?

Not sure what your point is?

Straw man argument.

How is it a straw man, when it pretty much repeating what you said?

You're talking about consequences of regular flu. I'm talking about consequences of covid.

So, even by your inflated number, 20 times fewer than COVID-19, if we assume we are halfway through the pandemic?

maybe we should have

What kids are being kept from school?

800000 people have died over the past two years in the US alone.

That’s an order of magnitude difference.

That’s why the response was an order of magnitude more substantial.

I’m baffled you think this is somehow surprising.

I’m baffled my point went over your head.

We have tens of thousands of thousands of deaths every year. In the past decade 300,000 died of the flu and nobody notices.

People did notice. Pre-pandemic this was the major reason most people got flu vaccines: it's nice not to get the flu, but even nicer not to kill grandma when you visit the nursing home. Bad flu seasons were heavily reported, and people were aware that, while mild to most, the flu can be very deadly to at risk populations.

In pre-pandemic years if there was a flu as contagious as omicron people would be in a panic.

I'm sorry you don't like reality, I've never been a huge fan myself, but what's happening is happening.

And in the next decade, based on current death rates, 4,000,000 Americans will die of COVID-19. Are you saying there's no difference between 3x10^5 and 4x10^6? Well, the difference is not that large, but apparently it does cross our arbitrary threshold for "this is actually quite bad and we should probably stop it from happening"

Huh? You’re extrapolating two year of a pandemic, most before a vaccine out 10 years?

That’s ridiculous right?

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