Flu and covid-19 compared

Posted On March 14, 2020

Topic	Seasonal Flu (usually called the flu), is different from pandemic flu	COVID-19 or corona virus
First reported	years ago, returned every year	Nov 2019
Season	starts Oct, ends early April, peak in Feb every year	started in Wuhan in Nov 2019, ends?? Will it recur?
Transmission	droplets in air cough, sneeze, talk	similar, the virus may stay longer in air
Vaccine	available, 45% effective	working on it
US	8% infected each season. or 9 to 45 million every year	2500 diagnosed so far
World	1 billion every year	over 150,000 so far
Symptoms are similar	fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, head, runny nose, fatigue	fever, dry cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle aches
Duration	acute last 5 days, cough can linger for weeks	symptoms appear in 2-3 days, lasts around 14 days
Severity	1% of patients hospitalized	80% mild, 14% severe, 5% critical
Death rate by location	0.1%. over 20k death per year in US	Hubei Province, China: 2.9%. Rest of China: 0.4%
Death rate by age – see graph below	33 countries 1999-2015: <69: 0.01- 0.6% >75: 1.79 – 22%	China: 80 or over: >70% 40-49: 0.2% 10-39: 0.2% <9: 0%
Main complications	pneumonia, respiratory failure	pneumonia, respiratory failure