A lot of people love to point out that we have tens of thousands of people in the US die every year from the flu, but we've only had a couple hundred deaths in the US from COVID-19. That seems quite a bit disingenuous to me, because we are still in the very early days of this virus, and people are comparing that to the numbers from a full flu season.

Anyways, I thought it would be an interesting idea to compare the impact of COVID-19 in Italy to the flu in Italy. I chose to look at Italy because it seems like they were handling things closer to how we are. South Korea completely locked down the country very early, and has very strict measures in place, so I don't really believe they are a good comparison. It isn't easy to find numbers for Italy (nearly everything I try to look up just shows COVID data), but I did find a news story from January (https://www.thelocal.it/20200123/flu-outbreak-in-italy-half-a-million-people-struck-down-in-a-week) which indicates between October 2019 and mid January 2020, Italy had approximately 2.8 million flu cases, and 240 deaths. Those deaths seem low compared to the US death rate (.01%), but those are the only numbers I've been able to find. Even with the US death rate, they would have 2,800 flu deaths between October and January (4 months).

For the coronavirus, Italy's first case looks to have appeared on Feb 15 (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/), which is convenient because that's 1 month. Over that month, they've had 21k cases and 1,400 deaths. Extrapolating that over four months, and it's 5,600 deaths (84K total cases). Likely it would be higher, because the virus has spread a lot more as the month has gone on. Based off of that quick match, with admittedly poor data, it seems like with no action taken, COVID-19 would be at a minimum twice as deadly as the flu (compared 2,800 estimated flu deaths in Italy and not the 240 deaths).

This is a good article about the responses in South Korea and Italy

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-response-specialre-idUSKBN20Z27P

Ranger #007 said:

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But it's going to spread exponentially not with the same number of cases each month.

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I agree, but I have no idea how to figure out that rate right now. I was just trying to do some quick back of the napkin math. I don't like how all the news organizations just say, "This is worse than the flu" without providing numbers. I also don't like how people on the internet say, "This isn't any worse than the flu," and then compare an entire flu season with two weeks of coronavirus. I wish more news organizations would publish accurate numbers and comparisons, rather than just trying to scare everyone or downplay the whole thing.

SoupNazi2001 said:

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We all know it is more deadly in the elderly. I would like to see a comparison to the flu in those less than 70 years old.

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I would love to see those numbers as well, especially in Italy, since that seems to be the best place to see what can happen if we ignore this.

TXAggie2011 said:

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This is a good article about the responses in South Korea and Italy

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-response-specialre-idUSKBN20Z27P

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I feel like South Korea's response will not be possible here in the US. I just don't see American's putting up with. Maybe in specific communities, but not nationwide.

AustinAg2K said:

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A lot of people love to point out that we have tens of thousands of people in the US die every year from the flu, but we've only had a couple hundred deaths in the US from COVID-19. That seems quite a bit disingenuous to me, because we are still in the very early days of this virus, and people are comparing that to the numbers from a full flu season.

Anyways, I thought it would be an interesting idea to compare the impact of COVID-19 in Italy to the flu in Italy. I chose to look at Italy because it seems like they were handling things closer to how we are. South Korea completely locked down the country very early, and has very strict measures in place, so I don't really believe they are a good comparison. It isn't easy to find numbers for Italy (nearly everything I try to look up just shows COVID data), but I did find a news story from January (https://www.thelocal.it/20200123/flu-outbreak-in-italy-half-a-million-people-struck-down-in-a-week) which indicates between October 2019 and mid January 2020, Italy had approximately 2.8 million flu cases, and 240 deaths. Those deaths seem low compared to the US death rate (.01%), but those are the only numbers I've been able to find. Even with the US death rate, they would have 2,800 flu deaths between October and January (4 months).

For the coronavirus, Italy's first case looks to have appeared on Feb 15 (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/), which is convenient because that's 1 month. Over that month, they've had 21k cases and 1,400 deaths. Extrapolating that over four months, and it's 5,600 deaths (84K total cases). Likely it would be higher, because the virus has spread a lot more as the month has gone on. Based off of that quick match, with admittedly poor data, it seems like with no action taken, COVID-19 would be at a minimum twice as deadly as the flu (compared 2,800 estimated flu deaths in Italy and not the 240 deaths).

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For those who ultimately die from this, verses recover, the average time to death is about 14 days, so you don't yet know if those who contracted it in the last two weeks will ultimately die and are, therefore, undercounting the number of deaths to contractions. You have wait to count them. But then use the denominator as the number of contractions from today and not Two weeks from now. That's why such a quickly evolving thing is tricky to accurately quantity.

However, in that morass of uncertainty taking data from multiple geographic areas, the death rate of this seems to be in the area of 0.6% to 3%, which puts this in the range of several times to an order of magnitude more deadly than a typical flu virus.

Most people with compromised immune systems are given the flu vaccine. With Covid-19 these same people are sitting ducks. With social distancing we can beat this thing.

VaultingChemist said:

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How is Covid-19 like the 1918 Spanish Flu

The 1918 Spanish Flu had an R0 of 1.8 and a case fatality rate of about 2.5%.

Covid-19 has an R0 of about 2.5 with a case fatality rate of about 0.7% to 2%.

It is almost a certainty that the 1918 Spanish Flu was the deadliest modern flu epidemic, and would have been considerably less lethal if it occurred in this century.

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That's why there is all the attention on slowing the spread. If it spikes quickly then it might as well be 1918 as healthcare facilities wont be able to keep up

0.4% of the American population over 85 die from influenza each year. That number was consistently 0.7% 15 years ago. That's the number of the general population. Not of those that contract the flu. 75-84 is 0.1% each year die of the general population. 65-74 is 0.03%

They say 10% of the population gets the flu each year. I bet less than that % for 85 or over due to so many getting the vaccine. This and 75-84 are the only ones that have a mortality rate that have dropped a great deal over the past 20 years. So let's assume only 5% of those 85 and over are getting it. Multiply the 0.4 times 20 and you have 8% as an estimated mortality rate for those 85 and over that contract the flu.

FastStats - Influenza
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm

Info from deaths mortality 2017 chart.

SKorea stats here

The updates on COVID-19 in Korea as of 15 March

Click on the first link on the page.
Go to the 3rd table on the linked page

Death Rate is > 9% over 80 right now.

AustinAg2K said:

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but we've only had a couple hundred deaths in the US from COVID-19.

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I mean, we've had 50 but sure, that rounds up to 200.

SoupNazi2001 said:

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We all know it is more deadly in the elderly. I would like to see a comparison to the flu in those less than 70 years old.

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See post above on SKorea (rises frighteningly over 60)