Comparing Coronavirus To Seasonal Flu

People are fond of comparing Coronavirus to Seasonal Flu Seasonal Flu.

They cite statistics like: “34,000 people died from the flu last year in the United States. But so far only 41 people in the United States have died from Covid-19.”

How Many Got Seasonal Flu And How Many Died From It

The problem with this argument — popular with Trump and the Fox News crowd — is proportionality.

Saying 34,000 people died from seasonal flu sounds like a huge number, but it does not take into account the much larger number of people who got seasonal flu but did not die from it.

You know how many people got the flu last year in the United States?

About 35 million.

Let that sink in.

35 million people got seasonal flu — in the United States alone — during the 2018-2019 flu season last year. And only 34,000 of those 35 million people died from it.

While 34,000 sounds like a lot of people, it’s about .1% of the 35 million people who were infected with seasonal flu. Do not miss the decimal point. It is critical.

How Many Got Covid-19 and How Many Have Died

Now compare the number of people who have died from Coronavirus infection with the number of people who have become infected with it.

As of the evening of March 12, Covid-19 has infected 132,700 people around the world, according to official counts.

And, as of the evening of March 12, at least 4,960 people have died, including 1,788 outside of mainland China.

That means that about 3.7% of all the people who have been confirmed as having Covid-19 have died from it.

If Covid -19 and Seasonal Flu Had the Same Death Rates (They Don’t)

Compare the .1% death rate of seasonal flu in the US to the 3.7% death rate of Covid-19 around the world:

If 3.7% of the people who got the seasonal flu last year died from it, the number of deaths would have been 1,295,000.

That number is about 37 times larger than 34,000.

Let’s look at Coronavirus only in the United States. So far, there have been 1,654 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US. The actual number is much higher; many people have not been tested, because US testing capacity has been and remains far behind the testing capacity of other nations.

Here is the math: 41 deaths out of 1,654 confirmed cases is 2.5%.

If 2.5% of the 35 million people who got seasonal flu last year died from it, there would not have been 34,000 deaths. There would have been 875,000 deaths from seasonal flu.

Let that sink in: if the death rate for seasonal flu in the United States were the same as the actual death rate for Coronavirus (a pandemic which is not finished in the US), then 875,000 would have died from seasonal flu last year, not only 34,000.

Experts say that the death rate for Coronavirus is expected to fall, but it will still likely be well above the death rate of the seasonal flu.

Comparing Coronavirus to Seasonal Flu is very dangerous. The two illnesses are not the same.

Source for seasonal flu statistics: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

Source for March 12 Coronavirus statistics: NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html?referringSource=articleShare

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