[eo3x0]

There are 2 things happening at once that seem to be causing a rift in online discussions:

1. It seems like people are severely underrating the flu and always have been. Remember when we closed all restaurants and bars and suspended all sports events when the flu killed an estimated 1 million people in 1968-1969? No you don’t because society seemed to have shrugged that one off. Ditto for many years when the flu kills upwards of 600k worldwide [1] 2. The reported CFR (Case Fatality Rates) across different countries is all over the place causing a lot of panic and overstated mortality rates. Countries like Italy report almost 7% whereas in Germany and South Korea, the CFR makes Covid-19 look like no big deal (Closer to 0.1%). I suspect that’s because Italy is well under counting the true denominator, while countries like SK have tested thousands of people per day making their data much more comprehensive.

There’s something unique about this year’s outbreak that seems to resonate deeply with more people. Ultimately it’s definitely not “just the flu” but it’s closer to that then a guaranteed death sentence.

We may see more damage from the secondary effects (people losing jobs, runs on medicine and supplies causing people to die) than from the virus itself.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H3... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019%E2%80%9320_cor...

[brg]

What I believe unique about this year's outbreak is that it is the first "social" pandemic; where in everyone is connected to a nonstop stream of both information and misinformation regarding its development.