Why is "just" flu supposed to be a good thing?

[randomsabreuse]

Influenza can be a very serious illness... everything about Covid sounds like one of the major flu epidemics (like the Spanish Flu as featured in Downton Abbey).

Surely the issue is that we've downgraded the common meaning of "flu" to "nasty cold that you can't battle through a day at work with" and forgotten that it's one of the biggest killers in history.

I'd say that Covid-19 being very much like Influenza (symptoms, infectiousness) is actually true, but calling it "just flu" understates the potential seriousness of both!

Sorry for the rant - been pissing me off since February!

It's not supposed to be a good thing to compare coronavirus to flu.
It's supposed to show the utter insanity of the extremely damaging measures we've taken, for something with similar consequences to other viruses we live with.
Coronavirus is far, far less less deadly for children - even up to the under 60s than flu. It's a bit more deadly for the over 60s than flu, and that increased deadliness increases with age.
But, the average age for dying of COVID is above the average life expectancy.

It is NOT something we should ever have shut society down for.
Plus - shutting down societies world-wide doesn't actually appear to have made any difference to the rate of spread of infection. Peru has had the longest, harshest lockdown (including mask AND visor mandates) and it's about to overtake Belgium to become the world leader for the most deaths per million in the world.

Why do people on Mumsnet / Facebook etc think they know more, beyond doubt, than experts.

But there are just as many experts that believe the reaction to covid has been disproportionate as there are that recommended a full lockdown.

And as for every government can't be wrong. Firstly not every country has gone into a full lockdown. Many countries have taken stricter measures, and some have taken different or lesser measures. Secondly, don't underestimated the politicisation of this "pandemic". Thirdly, the vast majority of countries have been taking advice from the WHO, so the reactions are bound to be simular. However, if the WHO are wrong or have an agenda - everyone could have been taking the wrong measures.

Isn’t the big difference that influenza is a well studied & researched illness? We not only know its risks (both the risks of death from the immediate illness & the small minority who go on to develop longer term heart/neurological complications) but we also have a vaccine to mitigate those risks.

Covid-19 is new. We are still only beginning to understand its risks - Long Covid, reinfection, persistence, the fact it’s a multi system vascular illness rather than respiratory etc, long term impacts on the immune system.

In the face of unknown risks of a highly infectious disease (and it is many times more infectious than flu) then when it comes to public health, the principal should be one of caution.

Do we "underreact" to flu?

Is the (imperfect and seasonal) vaccine the difference?

I'm not commenting on the reaction to Covid by governments and individuals, merely the linguistic acrobatics that make one of the biggest killers in history a reassuring comparison...

Do we "underreact" to flu?

If the appropriate reaction is crippling the economy, ruining people's mental health, depriving our children of education and social contact to prevent the spread of flu, letting cancer go undiagnosed, stop extended family from seeing each other, etc, then I'd say no - we dont underreact to flu.

But it's a reassuring comparison because we live with flu. We don't have to shut schools or wear masks or lock people in their homes. If we can get on with living with flu in the population, then we can get on living with covid circulating the population.

It would be harder to keep going as normal if covid was like bubonic plague but with no treatment.

For society as a whole yes. We need to discriminate and keep vulnerable people safe, however.

Surely the decision lies with the vulnerable people. Some will want protection, others with only a few short years (or months) left will want to live their lives to the full. They have the right to make that decision, or their relatives do on their behalf.

Why do people on Mumsnet / Facebook etc think they know more, beyond doubt, than experts.

What the experts know is also limited due to lack of evidence. They disagree with each other too over this.

"Asked to reflect on the current crisis, Mr Brusin said that in some ways Europe should consider itself lucky as it could have been hit by a far more lethal pathogen than Covid-19.

“In a way, we were lucky that this Covid pandemic was not really a black swan event. It was a white swan in terms of deaths. Certainly, it is nothing like the 1918 Spanish Flu or smallpox and cholera in the 1800s"

Sergio Brusin, principle expert at European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/europe-will-continue-see-covid-outbreaks-winter-should-avoid/.

I don’t understand why people are only focused on the death rate. The percentage of people with covid needing hospital treatment is far higher than for flu and the potential percentage of people at risk That is why countries went into lock down, not just because of the mortality rate which is thankfully lower than first thought.
It also appears that people are unable to comprehend that just because countries kept on top of covid with lockdowns it doesn’t mean that there was therefore no point to it.

I don’t think they are tbh. But it’s what is frequently chucked alongside long covid and ‘denier’ at anyone who questions lockdown as a policy.

I believe covid is a nasty virus, I can see clearly it is a risk to everyone potentially. I also think we had to lockdown very short term in March due to the risk of hospitals being overwhelmed. But longer term covid isn’t going anywhere whether we like it or not and we need to accept that and live with the additional risk of the virus. Lock down as a cure is quite simply worse than the disease.

The first rule of medicine is ‘do no harm’.