|
I agree that some people may think things are worse than they are. I feel like the zeitgeist, at least in my area, is a lingering uncertainty of exactly how bad things are, due to a lack of testing, and of how bad things can get, as we saw in italian and new york hospitals. My understanding, however, is that the transmissibility of covid-19 is 3 to 10 times greater than the common flu. For instance, our local public transit agency doesn't have dozens of drivers testing positive for the flu and having symptoms each year. Coupled with the, something between 2 and 10 times greater death rate, the largest concern is overrunning hospitals if there is a bad wave in an area. As another example, because it's more transmissible, my community is also worried about getting infected because don't want to infect family if we get it, whereas I don't think we worry about the same with the flu. My understanding of the current situation is that if everyone would wear a mask and social distance, there would be very little reason to continue with many of the other precautions that have been instituted. As you said, we live with the flu, so we don't need to make the transmissibility 0. I'm going to be very interested to look back at this in a decade and see what we've learned and what could have been differently. How overblown, or conversely, how valid are our fears right now? The biggest problem is we just don't know, and won't for a while. |
It looks like our protections for Covid-19 were very effective against Flu transmission at least that is the assumption.