This analysis is dumb. First, abortions, as evil as they are, is not in the same realm. They're not acts of God or negligence, but systemic murder.
HIV/Aids are not passed through the air. It is almost always transferred based on life choices.
Cancer and road fatalities are non-contagious. Those numbers are more or less stable through the population.
So, you are left comparing the Wuhan Pneumonia with seasonal flu and "communicable diseases". Communicable diseases is a bucket of diseases, so it only helps so far as seeing how this virus stacks against the whole of viruses.
The flu doesn't start the year at near zero cases. The number ebbs and flows through the seasons, but there's always a large population with it at any given time. This is not the case with covid. It came out of no where, shows exponential growth and a proclivity to cause symptoms worse than the flu.
We still don't have an accurate death rate, but the growth is the aspect to fear currently. Some subset of those infected need medical attention and if we do not slow the growth, our medical system will not be able to handle them all which will cause the death rate to spike.
There are plenty of arguments for opening the economy, but this is a lazy one. Personally, I believe we verify the medications we have will work, stock up on them and tests, then open everything back up while mass testing and treating anybody that shows positive or has been in contact with them. Keep the high risk population at home until we can show we have it under control.
Bringing up the flu isn't to necessarily compare the two conditions directly, but to compare the media, government, and public responses.
Both SARS/COVID-19 and flu are airborne viruses. I'd wager that the same sort of "social distancing" concepts would be effective at managing the flu. The CDC shows that 60.8 million Americans tested positive for H1N1 during the 2009-10 pandemic. That was about a fifth of the total US population at the time.
Now, we also know that unless you're old and/or have serious preexisting conditions (i.e. lupus, cancer, etc.), COVID-19 isn't all that dangerous. These same people would also be more vulnerable to flu.
This begs the question. Why is there such a drastic reaction to COVID-19 and not to the flu during the H1N1 pandemic? Both are transmissible through the same methods. Both are of great concern to the same populations.
I'm not going to get into the speculated political crap (i.e. bioweapons, trying to crash the economy, etc.). However, I will say that the core of the issue here is this: We effectively take the flu for granted. It happens every year. COVID-19 is new/unusual (not really, but that's another story) and people are typically more afraid of the new problem relative to ones they see every day. We can see a similar attitude when it comes to mass shootings. Many times more people are killed in single perp/single victim incidents than in any kind of mass murder incident. However, it is precisely because mass murder incidents aren't all that common that they garner so much attention.
The flu infects more people worldwide, but has a lower mortality rate than COVID-19.
COVID-19 infects (or will infect by year's end) more people worldwide, but has a lower mortality rate than measles (another airborne, contagious disease).
COVID-19 is in between these two extremes, but the reaction to it is far more extreme than the other two. We can justify the initial reaction as being due to a lack of definitive treatment, but now that we know one exists, people should be relaxing over it. That doesn't seem to be happening.
I agree with most of your points, but that isn't what was being inferred by the post. The OP was trying to say that we have more infections of the flu, so this is no big deal.
The disagreements:
This isn't as transmissible as measles, but it is more deadly. In the first decade of reporting, prior to any vaccines, there were 6,000 deaths reported per year for the measles. Since vaccines, it's much less. [https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html]
I agree in part on the premise of having treatment in chloroquine. However, our production and stock piles need to increase to cover the rest of the population before opening up society.
This analysis is dumb. First, abortions, as evil as they are, is not in the same realm. They're not acts of God or negligence, but systemic murder.
HIV/Aids are not passed through the air. It is almost always transferred based on life choices.
Cancer and road fatalities are non-contagious. Those numbers are more or less stable through the population.
So, you are left comparing the Wuhan Pneumonia with seasonal flu and "communicable diseases". Communicable diseases is a bucket of diseases, so it only helps so far as seeing how this virus stacks against the whole of viruses.
The flu doesn't start the year at near zero cases. The number ebbs and flows through the seasons, but there's always a large population with it at any given time. This is not the case with covid. It came out of no where, shows exponential growth and a proclivity to cause symptoms worse than the flu.
We still don't have an accurate death rate, but the growth is the aspect to fear currently. Some subset of those infected need medical attention and if we do not slow the growth, our medical system will not be able to handle them all which will cause the death rate to spike.
There are plenty of arguments for opening the economy, but this is a lazy one. Personally, I believe we verify the medications we have will work, stock up on them and tests, then open everything back up while mass testing and treating anybody that shows positive or has been in contact with them. Keep the high risk population at home until we can show we have it under control.
Bringing up the flu isn't to necessarily compare the two conditions directly, but to compare the media, government, and public responses.
Both SARS/COVID-19 and flu are airborne viruses. I'd wager that the same sort of "social distancing" concepts would be effective at managing the flu. The CDC shows that 60.8 million Americans tested positive for H1N1 during the 2009-10 pandemic. That was about a fifth of the total US population at the time.
Now, we also know that unless you're old and/or have serious preexisting conditions (i.e. lupus, cancer, etc.), COVID-19 isn't all that dangerous. These same people would also be more vulnerable to flu.
This begs the question. Why is there such a drastic reaction to COVID-19 and not to the flu during the H1N1 pandemic? Both are transmissible through the same methods. Both are of great concern to the same populations.
I'm not going to get into the speculated political crap (i.e. bioweapons, trying to crash the economy, etc.). However, I will say that the core of the issue here is this: We effectively take the flu for granted. It happens every year. COVID-19 is new/unusual (not really, but that's another story) and people are typically more afraid of the new problem relative to ones they see every day. We can see a similar attitude when it comes to mass shootings. Many times more people are killed in single perp/single victim incidents than in any kind of mass murder incident. However, it is precisely because mass murder incidents aren't all that common that they garner so much attention.
The flu infects more people worldwide, but has a lower mortality rate than COVID-19.
COVID-19 infects (or will infect by year's end) more people worldwide, but has a lower mortality rate than measles (another airborne, contagious disease).
COVID-19 is in between these two extremes, but the reaction to it is far more extreme than the other two. We can justify the initial reaction as being due to a lack of definitive treatment, but now that we know one exists, people should be relaxing over it. That doesn't seem to be happening.
I agree with most of your points, but that isn't what was being inferred by the post. The OP was trying to say that we have more infections of the flu, so this is no big deal.
The disagreements:
This isn't as transmissible as measles, but it is more deadly. In the first decade of reporting, prior to any vaccines, there were 6,000 deaths reported per year for the measles. Since vaccines, it's much less. [https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html]
The flu has an R0 of 1.3 and covid is 2-3. The flu kills, on average, 508 people per day (US, 2018-2019 season). We had 1,040 covid deaths yesterday and it is still likely ramping up. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/01/coronavirus-kills-1-000-single-day-u-s-double-flu/5100905002/]
I agree in part on the premise of having treatment in chloroquine. However, our production and stock piles need to increase to cover the rest of the population before opening up society.