Source: CDC weekly influenza map.
This is not the worst flu season ever.
Just the worst in the past decade or so. Here’s this week, in 2009, which was the worst flu season in about a half-century.
The CDC writeup of the 2009-2010 flu season makes interesting reading. The severity of the 2009-2010 flu was due to a new and highly mutated strain of flu. More-or-less nobody under age 60 had any immunity to it. Although CDC doesn’t use the term, that was the swine flu pandemic of 2009/2010.
For the U.S., CDC estimated about 275,000 hospitalizations with flu, and about 12,500 deaths from flu, during that exceptionally severe flu season.
To keep things in perspective, at current rates, for COVID, it will take about 78 days to equal that hospitalization count, and about 35 days to equal that death count.
Or, in round numbers, COVID currently amounts to about 10 swine flu pandemics per year, in terms of deaths, and about 5 swine flu pandemics per year, in terms of hospitalizations.
That’s comparing the current rates from COVID, to the worst flu season in the U.S. in roughly the last half-century.
Even now, you’ll read (e.g.) comments to news stories suggesting that COVID is no worse than flu. The facts say otherwise. COVID case rates will have to fall by about a factor of ten before COVID will be no worse than the worst flu season in recent history.
And, just FYI, regarding the death count, these are deaths from COVID, not merely deaths with COVID. The U.S. CDC says this:
- COVID-19 should not be reported on the death certificate if it did not cause or contribute to the death (reference).
- In at least 90% of cases, COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause of death (reference).
- In the remaining cases, COVID-19 was listed as a contributing cause of death (reference).
So, yeah, I’m still masking up when I go to the gym.
