Covid-19 is Much Worse Than The Flu

"COVID-19 is much worse than the flu, JVL reminds us in today's Bulwark.  Anyone who says otherwise is either lying, or does not know what they are talking about.

He also argues that we are under counting the deaths from the coronavirus. And he has a chart he wants you to look at. 

The number most often cited for annual flu deaths is 60,000. This number is a composite. It includes a relatively small number of deaths directly ascribed to influenza (meaning, there was a positive flu-test involved) PLUS a much larger number of deaths from pneumonia, where it is assumed that because flu-like symptoms were present, the influenza virus was likely at play.

This is the exact opposite of how we’ve been tabulating COVID-19 deaths.

So right from the beginning, the COVID-19 and flu death numbers are apples and oranges:

• The “flu death” numbers are mostly deaths that we assume are related to influenza, even though only a small minority of them were proven to have influenza present.
• The COVID-19 numbers are made up only of deaths that have an accompanying positive test for coronavirus and leave out deaths from COVID-19 like symptoms.

That’s the measurement problem. There are other problems, too, which have to do with the rate of infection.

Take a look at this graph and you should understand why COVID-19 is fundamentally different from the flu:"