Corona-19 v. the Flu: Lethality

Jan 3, 2021 —

“A coronavirus is a type of cold” proclaimed SpaceX chief, Elon Musk when he came down with a mild case of COVID-19. Not exactly. Some colds are caused by other coronaviruses, but none are caused by SARS-CoV-2, the second type of SARS coronavirus. SARS-CoV-2 and nothing else causes COVID-19.

A debunked viral Facebook post claimed on Dec. 28, 2020, that a Cornell professor of molecular medicine “tested 1500 ‘supposed’ positive Covid 19 samples,” and every one of them was just the Flu. WebMD, however, claims “COVID Far More Lethal Than Flu.” So what do the numbers say?

You will see a lot of statistics like 

The death rate among COVID-19 patients was 18%, while it was 5% for those with the flu. Those with COVID were nearly five times more likely to die than flu patients.  —WebMD

That raises a lot of questions like 18% is not five times 5%, so what are they saying? And is COVID really only 3.6 times worse than the flu? And why are they only talking about “if we catch it.” Doesn’t it matter that COVID is more contagious?

So I looked up the stats on the CDC website. They are easy to find, and they are given by age group. Since the flu varies from year to year, I averaged the last-three, year-long flu seasons. And I compared that average to a full year of COVID-19.

I figured that ran from April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, so I used a cautious projection of deaths for the next three months. I assumed they would average 1,500 per day even though they are now running at over 2,600 per day.

The flu killed 44,500 people per year on average, while it looks like our first full year of COVID-19 will kill about 476,000. That’s more than 10 times as many as the flu. But is that just because COVID is killing a bunch of old people who were about to die anyway, as some “pro-life” Republicans are saying?

As you can see, although COVID does target older folks, so does the flu, and the result is that COVID is killing about 10 times as many people in all age ranges as a typical flu year.

You can see the links and calculations in this spreadsheet.