More people died from the Spanish Flu than from combat in WW1 and WW2 combined. That was the first global pandemic due to soldiers traveling around the world. What's a modern version going to look like in an era of airplane travel?
People died from the Spanish flu because they were malnourished and because the general conditions were bad. The Spanish flu would be nothing like that if it happened today ... In Europe at least.
That article doesn't seem to support "because they were malnourished" at all... it correctly points out that the 1918 pandemic was unique in having high mortality among the young (under 30) due to "Lack of pre-existing virus-specific and/or cross-reactive antibodies and cellular immunity in children and young adults" which doesn't seem to be the case with the current virus which seems to affect mainly the elderly.
Famously, the disease hit soldiers in basic training hard before they were deployed. These were not malnourished people. It's entirely likely that malnourished populations suffered greatly under Spanish Flu, but it's clear that completely healthy young adults were highly vulnerable to dying from the disease.
Even this year… 16,000 people have died from the flu so far, and this is a particularly mild year, save for the high amount of childhood deaths.
COVID-19 seems to be almost completely manufactured hysteria based on fuzzy math which includes using very low estimates of the number of infected to artificially increase the fatality rate.
When all of the top epidemiologists, public health officials, and physicians from around the globe are sounding the alarm to take something seriously - it's probably a good idea to take it seriously. If it turns out that Covid-19 is a dud in terms of impact, it will be because of not in spite of the substantial steps people are taking to be prepared.
All the headlines seem menacing but then I look at the data and stand back and say WTF.
It already is a dud. Relatively speaking, very few people die from this. 80%+ of confirmed cases are so mild you have to wonder why they were even tested. It seems to not spread as fast as the flu. No children have died.
Basically, it’s been three month and 2,000 people over 70 have died globally.
More people died from the flu LAST WEEK IN THE US ALONE.
If I sold you a car for $1.00 the first day, $2.00 the first day, $4.00 the third day, ... It would look like a pretty good bargain the first few days compared to what people typically pay for cars. Eventually, on day 14, you start to reconsider how good the deal is when you make a $16,384 payment and face making a $32,768 one tomorrow.
If COVID-19 spreads exponentially, it will result in basically everyone getting it. Yes, it will take a little while (and maybe spring/summer will do enough to put on the brakes to let us have more treatment options). The fatality percentage, means if everyone gets it, it will be like several years of flu concentrated over a year or two.
Besides that, it's likely to overwhelm public health systems and have societal/economic consequences from the amount of sickness and attempts to contain the virus.
Eh, I've spent like 15 hours fitting various models to the different datasets of case counts and seeing quadratic growth under containment measures some places and what looks like exponential growth others... Maybe that's "parroting media FUD."
Yes more people have died from the flu so far, but Covid-19 was only officially identified last month and is growing exponentially. Based on the studies we have seen so far, it is more contagious than the flu (R0 of 2.2 vs 1.3), and significantly more deadly (fatality rate of 2.3% vs 0.1%). We're still in the early stages of this and it is continuing to spread.
Looking only at the total numbers paints a misleading picture.
It is no longer growing exponentially in China because they have quarantined millions of people. It was growing exponentially prior to the quarantine.
It is growing exponentially in other countries with recent outbreaks. Look at the growth charts for South Korea, Italy, and Iran.
While it is good news that the growth can be contained via quarantine, it is incredibly misleading to claim "this is just like the flu". The flu doesn't require the government to force people to stay locked up in their homes in order to prevent outbreaks.
You seem really hung up on the fact that the flu has killed more people. But based on all the studies we've seen so far, this virus is more contagious than the flu, and more deadly as well. If it infects the same number of people as the flu does every year, a lot more people will die.
Look at the ex-China infected graph here, and click the "logarithmic scale" toggle. Looks pretty close to a straight line to me. https://www.coronaviruschart.com/
China's growth in case count has slowed down. Whether that's because of massive control efforts (literally welding people in homes, etc), or because of inaccurate reporting / missed cases, or both-- is unknown.
If major world governments started saying they were about to nuke one another it would not be valid to say "Why are you so worried about nukes? Car accidents killed a million people last year and nobody died due to nuclear weapons."
A pandemic from a novel virus is a black swan event that is not well represented by looking at recent statistics. The risk is not the recent past, but the possible future where this infects a significant percentage of the world's population, overwhelms our healthcare system, and kills millions if not more.
