A friend of mine recently lost his father to COVID-19. When his wife lamented people not taking COVID-19 seriously, another friend, who does not take COVID-19 seriously, replied, “There are more than 600,000 deaths from the flu each year, but the news doesn’t tell you to be afraid of the flu.” This interaction was via social media.
How are we to interpret this interaction? What is the responder trying to communicate? What reply, if any, should we make?
My first suggestion would be to respond with grace. Presume the responder is having a bad day. This pandemic has brought many people to the brink, and some days are worse than others. Acknowledge that before anything else.
Once grace has been given, respond dispassionately with math and science. The actual estimate of flu-related deaths per year by the WHO is 650,000. We recently passed 1 million deaths from COVID-19 in the past nine months. Currently there are about 5,000 deaths per day globally. That rate has been relatively steady for the last several months. Assuming that rate continues to the end of the year, there will be another 460,000 deaths before the year ends. Thus, while the flu accounts for 650,000 per year, COVID-19 will account for nearly 1.5 million. Remember also that these are based on confirmed numbers, the actual numbers are almost certainly higher.
The total deaths from the flu per year in the United States has averaged about 40,000 over the last decade. The United States recently passed 200,000 deaths from COVID-19. This total covers the past seven months. Currently there are 750–1000 deaths per day in the United States from COVID-19. The best estimates for widespread vaccine penetration in the United States is late first quarter into second quarter of 2021, so we will likely see this rate of deaths for the next five months. That will result in about an additional 100,000 deaths, bringing the total to over 300,000, or over seven times more per year than the flu. It is worth noting that the United States has less than 10% of the total flu deaths per year but currently has about 20% of the deaths from COVID-19. The United States has the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world, both in absolute numbers and per capita.
So it is not the news that causes us to fear COVID-19, it is our understanding of math and science that leads us to not fear, but take this pandemic seriously. It is our belief that others have as much value as we do that leads us to sacrifice our convenience for the health and lives of others.