A common myth these days.
(Image courtesy of geopoliticalfutures.com.)
Claim: COVID-19 actually has a lower death rate than common strains of the flu.
Rating: FALSE/INCORRECT
Explanation: This myth has been around for several months, and was spread by many people, including President Trump. But they are wrong. COVID-19 is not "Just another flu".
Ever since the new coronavirus was discovered in early January, people have compared it with the flu, pointing out that influenza causes tens of thousands of deaths every year in the U.S. alone. Indeed, during the current flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there were up to 62,000 flu deaths in the U.S. from October 2019 through April 2020.
At a glance, this may appear similar to the toll of COVID-19, which as of early May, had caused about 65,000 U.S. deaths. (As of Thursday, May 13, the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. was more than 82,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.)
But this doesn't match what health care providers are seeing on the frontlines [sic] of the pandemic, particularly in hot zones (such as New York City), "where ventilators have been in short supply and many hospitals have been stretched beyond their limits," the authors said.
—Livescience
Dr. Michael Chang, an infectious disease specialist with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston, says one of the biggest challenges of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is that it’s completely new.
That means there’s a lot we don’t know about it — how it spreads, how it infects people, how it causes damage in the body, how the immune system responds to it.
Seasonal flu, on the other hand, has been around for a long time, so scientists and doctors know a lot about it, including the best way to treat people who have the illness.
“We have more experience with the complications of flu — such as cardiac problems and bacterial pneumonias that happen after you get the flu — but with COVID-19, every treatment is essentially a trial run,” Chang told Healthline.
There’s also a yearly vaccine available for seasonal flu. While it’s not 100 percent effective, it still offers some protection and can lessen the severity of illness.
The flu vaccine doesn’t just protect people who are vaccinated. It also protects the larger community by slowing the spread of influenza viruses that are circulating.
There are also four antiviral drugs approved for treating seasonal flu. These can reduce the duration and severity of symptoms in people with the flu.
For COVID-19, a vaccine is most likely 12 to 18 months away, and there are currently no approved treatments.
—Healthline
Before the coronavirus emerged, the flu was a major public health concern, especially for the elderly. However, the COVID-19 death rate now dwarfs the death rate associated with influenza. According to the CDC, about 0.1% of people infected with the flu in the U.S died last year. Coronavirus, on the other hand, is tracking at a 5.2% death rate.
That makes the average COVID-19 death rate 52 times higher than that of the flu.
That number is even more astonishing when broken down by age group and compared to the flu:
Ages 65+: 0.83% of elderly people infected with the flu die, compared to 61.3% of those infected with the coronavirus
Ages 50-64: 0.06% of those infected with the flu due from the virus, compared to 2.9% of those infected with coronavirus
Ages 0-4: 0.01% of young children infected with the flu die, compared to 1.9% of those infected with coronavirus
Given this information, experts emphasize that it’s critical to take extra precautions to stop the spread of COVID-19.
“Comparisons between SARS-CoV-2 mortality and seasonal influenza mortality must be made using an apples-to-apples comparison, not an apples-to-oranges comparison. Doing so better demonstrates the true threat to public health from COVID-19,” stated Carlos del Rio, MD of Emory University School of Medicine.
—COVID-19 Clinical Trial
So no, COVID-19 is actually considerably more deadly than the flu, though the ratio varies depending on the strain of flu. For example, the common flu kills about 0.01% who get it, but Swine flu kills 0.02%.
Sources:
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