A conservative physician friend i respect reposted this earlier. I think it gets to some of the misconceptions about comparing this to the flu at this point.
I am not panicking, nor trying to be political about any of this, but the 'the flu is worse' stuff is no longer holding true in the same sense that it did weeks ago. I admit that i was shocked yesterday to see a man, likely in the higher risk category, walk out of a restroom in a truck stop in alabama without washing his hands (okay, i was shocked for multiple reasons).
Anyway, an excerpt . There are graphs and such within the link for those who are interested.
I'll also add another article i read pointed out that 1) we have vaccinations for the flu, which always helps mitigate the impact of the flu on our health system and 2) our immune systems are familiar with the flu through years of exposure (both being sick and even when a vaccination didn't seem to work it still gave us exposure). We don't have that at this point for corona virus.
I am not panicking, nor trying to be political about any of this, but the 'the flu is worse' stuff is no longer holding true in the same sense that it did weeks ago. I admit that i was shocked yesterday to see a man, likely in the higher risk category, walk out of a restroom in a truck stop in alabama without washing his hands (okay, i was shocked for multiple reasons).
Anyway, an excerpt . There are graphs and such within the link for those who are interested.
COVID-19 isn’t just the flu?
COVID-19 has been described by some as “just a cold,” or just like the common flu. COVID-19 is not a common flu. COVID-19 is an order of magnitude worse than the flu. The fatality rate is approximately ten times worse than the flu.
The flu spreads from September through April in the U.S., and June through August in the Southern Hemisphere. Yes, it does cause severe illness in many, but it does so over a longer time course. Time is a variable that is working against us during this COVID-19 outbreak. COVID-19 victims will be presenting to a hospital in need of critical care at a rate that is far higher than occurs with the flu.
In addition, these patients will require hospital treatment over the course of a few weeks rather than the 3-4 months of a typical flu season. The health care system in the USA is not ready to handle tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people over a short time frame. In Italy, the health care system buckled under the strain, and the health care teams are now forced to make horrible life and death decisions.
I'll also add another article i read pointed out that 1) we have vaccinations for the flu, which always helps mitigate the impact of the flu on our health system and 2) our immune systems are familiar with the flu through years of exposure (both being sick and even when a vaccination didn't seem to work it still gave us exposure). We don't have that at this point for corona virus.
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