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+--- Thread: COVID-19 versus the flu: "This is additive, not in place of" justification for panic (/thread-8235.html)
COVID-19 versus the flu: "This is additive, not in place of" justification for panic - C C - Mar 13, 2020
Coronavirus is forcing the biggest global sports shutdown since World War II
https://qz.com/1816538/coronavirus-is-shutting-down-sports-from-soccer-to-ncaa-basketball/
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(US) CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza. The number of influenza-associated illnesses that occurred [...] was similar to the estimated number of influenza-associated illnesses during the 2012–2013 influenza season when an estimated 34 million people had symptomatic influenza illness.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
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(US) CDC estimates that, from October 1, 2019, through March 7, 2020, there have been:
36,000,000 – 51,000,000 flu illnesses
17,000,000 – 24,000,000 flu medical visits
370,000 – 670,000 flu hospitalizations
22,000 – 55,000 flu deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
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EXCERPT: So what are the differences between coronavirus and the flu? For starters, there is no vaccine for COVID-19 and it could take many months or years to get one to market, and, unlike the influenza viruses for which there are several vaccines, humans have not built up an immunity over multiple generations. What’s worse, doctors fear the virus will mutate.
[...] Of course, there are similarities between influenza and COVID-19. Both viruses are untreatable with antibiotics, and they have almost identical symptoms — fever, coughing, night sweats, aching bones, tiredness and, in more severe cases of both viruses, nausea and even diarrhea. They can be spread by touching your face, coughing and sneezing.
But doctors say their differences are just as varied. “It’s a little simple to think the novel coronavirus is just like flu,” Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security and a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told MarketWatch. “We don’t want another flu,” he said. “This is additive, not in place of. Yes, the flu kills thousands of people every year, but we’re going to have more deaths.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-vs-the-flu-its-just-like-other-viruses-and-we-should-go-about-our-normal-business-right-wrong-heres-why-2020-03-09
RE: COVID-19 versus the flu: "This is additive, not in place of" justification for panic - Zinjanthropos - Mar 14, 2020
Have viruses evolved to become less virulent? IOW not kill a large percentage of their host if they are to survive. Was the Black Plague and perhaps Spanish Influenza so good at killing the host that it actually helped slow the virus spread down and/or aid in its own extinction?
RE: COVID-19 versus the flu: "This is additive, not in place of" justification for panic - C C - Mar 14, 2020
(Mar 14, 2020 02:01 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Have viruses evolved to become less virulent? IOW not kill a large percentage of their host if they are to survive. Was the Black Plague and perhaps Spanish Influenza so good at killing the host that it actually helped slow the virus spread down and/or aid in its own extinction?
Usually they strike a balance.
With some bird pathogens, a strain becomes more benign when it's reproducing less due to fewer hosts and long travel distances in between them. But once an infected bird reaches a location with a dense population and the rate of multiplying ticks up, the invader's character increases in harmfulness.
HIV has arguably become weaker due to its adaptations to immune responses and treatments coming at the structural expense of ability to reproduce rapidly.