Explainer: Covid-19 still isn't like the flu

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Wed, 2022-04-20 18:00 — mike kraft

Covid-19 still isn't like the flu When Delta Air Lines referred to Covid-19 as an "ordinary seasonal virus" after a federal judge struck down the Biden administration's mask mandate for public transportation, they were partly right: there is some evidence that it is seasonal. But it is far from ordinary, and it's still not the same as the flu. Deidre McPhillips, CNN CNN

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Even as measures of severe Covid-19 drastically improve, they remain much worse than even the most severe flu.

The 2017-18 flu season was one of the worst in decades. An estimated 710,000 people were hospitalized and 52,000 died.

Daily Covid-19 deaths are nearing their lowest point in a year now -- but even with a relatively low rate of 400 deaths a day, the virus has still killed more people in two months than flu did over a full year at its worst. At the height of the Omicron surge just a few months ago, more people died of Covid-19 in just a few weeks than a full year of flu.

Covid-19 hospitalizations have recently hit the lowest point on record and new admissions over the past week were still three times higher than the latest weekly admissions for the flu, CDC data shows.

And Covid-19 is still unpredictable.

Covid-19 has some similarities to the flu, but it's not the same, said Dr. Arnold Monto, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan and acting chair of the US Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

"We're in uncharted territory," he said. "With flu, we know what to expect pretty much, but with Covid we're learning every day."...

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