Some recent numbers. Italy, Spain, France and The United Kingdom have combined population of about 240 million while the US has a population of about 330 million. The named 4 European nations have had about 57 thousand persons reportedly die from the corona virus while the US has had about 19 thousand reported deaths. Population adjusted virus deaths in the US would have been expected to be about 80 thousand if we had experienced the same rate as have the 4 European nations. Would some on here as well as around the nation be taking the threat more seriously if we had experienced 4 times our death rate as the European experience would indicate? or not?

No

Meanwhile the CDC reports as of april 6th 2020 400,000 hospitalizations and 63,000 deaths from the flu .........hmmmm , no one gives a crap ?

You do know that 80,000 is more than 63,000 do you not. And the CDC data is from a 5 or 6 month long flu season while the COVID data is from essentially one month.

I thought you said the number was 19,000


Hypothetical numbers mean nothing

No one was social distancing for the flu.
Just imagine the number of deaths and infections from covid if it had been treated like a normal flu and no drastic social distancing measures were adopted.

We all realize by now that the flu and Covid19 are two completely different diseases both in terms of their contagiousness and their death rate. We all realize Covid19 has the potential to kill far more than the flu. But that doesn't change the fact that 63,000 Americans dead is a whole lot of dead people.

Straight question....if we could reduce that number of flu deaths (63,000) by 90% (down to 6,300 deaths) by doing the social distance thing and shutting the country down every flu season, would it be worth it? Why or why not? Why is it worth doing it for Covid19 but not the flu? Is it because Covid19 might possibly kill more people? Does that mean that those 63,000 deaths are acceptable?

Cohunt, this virus has been here since last fall, my wife had a dry cough in November that lasted 6 weeks and would have a fever every couple days. My middle daughter was sick in January with a fever for a week and tested negative for the flu twice. There were people sick all winter in my area and most of them claim they tested negative for the flu and had the symptoms of the beer flu. IMO, what we are going through is a heck of a lot more do to do with politics than a nation concerned about health and well being of its people.

Exactly!

AntiGov--Slowly read the original post. As far as THIS virus in the US since last fall, NO

If a person dies of a heart attach, but tested positive for cv19, they list cause of death as cv19. I think numbers are messed up

All those death numbers are rather small in the big picture. High risk individuals should, if they desire to, self isolate. Low risk people should have just carried on. Imho.

This is political upset cause by those nefarious individuals who are after the control of our country and others, it's no coincidence after three failed attempts to bring Trump down we now have some exotic virus trying to take down the economy right before his election.

The flu is much more dangerous than C19, and if it would have had the same thing done to it as this virus has had done, the death rates MAY have been less, there is no way to know with out going thru it, speculation is just that, any one can throw numbers around and make them look either good or bad to suit their point of argument.

I also believe this virus has been here much longer than just a month or so, there were to many sick people the first of the year with nothing showing what it was and some Doctors even saying they had never seen such a thing before, its not coincidence folks, its a human released attack to test and it's done it's job very well.

People should be noticing and taking better steps, the next one may just be the end all !!

They only have to exhibit 3 of the symptoms , no testing required .
And they get $ 13,000 for every case , you do the math .

Minn. has 57 deaths from the virus, average age 87, terrible yes, but not unexpected. Let's be honest, in your 80s your on borrowed time.

Cohunt how come you left out Germany.

Old thing we don’t have socialized medicine, we may have seen the rates some of those European countries have experienced.

^^^^^This^^^^^

Oh no you didn’t?

I see the governor drag out the health officials to make his point. Why don’t they drag out the economists?

Can we put a price on human life? Of course we can

Could the difference be explained by socialized vs free market medicine?

I hope they come out with a antibody test, I had something in February that kicked my butt. I don’t generally get the flu and I don’t remember the last time, this thing had me down for 3 weeks. I doubt it was coved but I’m interested

S-49er and corky, I was not attempting to explain the difference in death RATEs. I am sure that researchers will spend years examining data for those answers. I was postulating a question. There are currently huge differences in death rates among locations within the US and I am sure that in time those differences will be examined as well. At this time, I would feel quite certain that no one actually knows why these differences in outcomes are happening, although it is easy to develop some hypotheses. From my perspective, it appears that in areas where the health care system has become overburdened and where health care workers have become infected themselves and become carriers, the transmission of the disease has hastened and outcomes have become less favorable.