If you take the time to look at the 2018-2019 flu season statistics, you'd see that in CA, we had 30-50 flu-related deaths PER WEEK! Why didn't we "lockdown" then? Is the media blowing this out of proportion? I saw during the 2018-2019 flu season that in the US, 80,000 people died! Did we shutter businesses, stop travel, and basically turn everyones life upside down? Did financial markets collapse?
It's amazing that in past years, all the flu-related deaths we had, and nothing changed in our day-to-day lives except taking precautions and washing your hands.
Yet now, the numbers are much lower with COVID-19 and look what we're doing. I'm trying to make sense of it.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
1.) This is probably the biggest reason (and has been stated ad nauseam...), the death rate for COVID-19 is currently at about 3.4% worldwide (this number is likely to fluctuate considerably before this is all over - but most estimates are for it to hover b/w 2% and 3%), whereas the death rate for the flu is usually around 0.1%. So we're talking about a 30 fold increase in the death rate.
2.) While the flu does mutate every year, the mutations are relatively minor and we have a good understanding of it. We know most of the systems, we know how to treat it, and most importantly we have a vaccine - that while not 100%, significantly reduces the number of flu cases every year while at the same time reducing the severity for those that do get it. By contrast, COVID-19 is a completely new virus, so there are a lot of unknowns surrounding it. Even now, months into the pandemic, with the genome of the virus fully mapped, we're still learning things about it.
3.) The lack of initial response by the U.S. has made things a lot worse than they needed to be. The biggest issue we're running into right now is simply not knowing how many people have been infected. This is because it took us way, way too long to start testing the populace; and even now we aren't testing nearly fast enough. Thus, governments and businesses are taking what may seem like extreme measures because the actual number of cases is going to be significantly hire than the currently reported number of cases, and if we don't start taking these extreme measures now (some that are already too late), this virus is going to spread through the entire population. Imagine, 7 million people dead in the U.S. (2% of our population) if we don't try and stem the tide.
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Or as we used to call it, sleep at your bench.
1.) This is probably the biggest reason (and has been stated ad nauseam...), the death rate for COVID-19 is currently at about 3.4% worldwide (this number is likely to fluctuate considerably before this is all over - but most estimates are for it to hover b/w 2% and 3%), whereas the death rate for the flu is usually around 0.1%. So we're talking about a 30 fold increase in the death rate.
2.) While the flu does mutate every year, the mutations are relatively minor and we have a good understanding of it. We know most of the systems, we know how to treat it, and most importantly we have a vaccine - that while not 100%, significantly reduces the number of flu cases every year while at the same time reducing the severity for those that do get it. By contrast, COVID-19 is a completely new virus, so there are a lot of unknowns surrounding it. Even now, months into the pandemic, with the genome of the virus fully mapped, we're still learning things about it.
3.) The lack of initial response by the U.S. has made things a lot worse than they needed to be. The biggest issue we're running into right now is simply not knowing how many people have been infected. This is because it took us way, way too long to start testing the populace; and even now we aren't testing nearly fast enough. Thus, governments and businesses are taking what may seem like extreme measures because the actual number of cases is going to be significantly hire than the currently reported number of cases, and if we don't start taking these extreme measures now (some that are already too late), this virus is going to spread through the entire population. Imagine, 7 million people dead in the U.S. (2% of our population) if we don't try and stem the tide.