[alyx]

Pull the flu/influenza death numbers from the CDC for the last decade. I dare you.

In the last ten years we (in the US) have lost +500,000 people to the flu.

For some reason the people that died from the flu must be lesser in value because nobody did anything about it.

You would think that a single year of 65k deaths would be enough for everybody to wear masks the following flu season. And yet?

No economic shutdowns. No masks. No restrictions on schools. Literally nothing other than vaccines that mostly don’t work.

[evan_]

With shutdowns, masks, and closed schools, COVID has killed in six months about a quarter of the people who die from the flu in a decade

How is that an argument for less-drastic measures?

[_-___________-_]

The comparison is fraught with problems due to the lack of immunity for COVID.

The "with shutdowns, masks and closed schools" line also assumes the effectiveness of all those measures, and ignores the glaring problem that they simply kick the can down the road -- there is no appetite for shutdowns and closed schools until the end of 2021, but a vaccine could easily take that long (if not longer) to be generally available -- assuming any of the current vaccine candidates work well. So what, exactly, is the plan?

[DanBC]

You're counting flu and covid-19 deaths differently.

For flu you're using sophisticated statistical modelling of excess death combined with community surveillance of use of primary and secondary care. This will tend to overcount.

For covid-19 you're using "died after testing positive for covid, or with covid mentioned as the cause on the death certificate". This will tend to undercount (even when taking into account the slight overcount involved in people who die from other things after a +ve test).