COVID-19 isn't the Flu, and Why Social Distancing Must Continue
COVID-19 isn’t just like the Flu, it’s much worse
One of the most common things I hear from people is that we’re overreacting to COVID-19 and that social distancing practices are not needed. Let’s take a look at the data and you can decide for yourself.
Influenza vs COVID-19
We took a look at the Influenza numbers over the past 10 years and picked a typical Flu year for comparison.
During the 2013-14 season, 30 million people in the U.S. were infected with the Flu, resulting in 350,000 hospitalizations and 38,000 deaths. The case fatality rate was 0.13%, meaning that for every 1,000 people who were infected with the Flu, 1 person died.
During the current COVID-19 pandemic, 2.3 million people in the U.S. have been infected with SAR-COV-2, resulting in 232,000 hospitalizations and 120,000 deaths. The case fatality rate is 5.26%, meaning that for every 1,000 people infected with the novel coronavirus, 52 people died.
Now let’s crunch the numbers.
1) Infections- Flu (30 million) vs COVID (2.3 million). Some could look quickly at the numbers and say, “see, way more people get the Flu than COVID”. Yes, historically, 13x more people get infected with the Flu each year than COVID this year, but the relatively low COVID infection numbers reflect a significantly lower transmission rate through social distancing. We don’t have the infection numbers for the Flu for this year, but they’ll significantly lower than a typical year.
2) Hospitalizations- Flu (350,000) vs COVID (232,000). Again, based on raw numbers more people have been hospitalized in a typical Flu year compared to the COVID. But let’s look at a more important number, hospitalization rate. In a typical Flu season, roughly 1% of those infected require hospitalization. For COVID, 10% of those infected require hospitalization. So the hospitalization rate for COVID is 10x that of the Flu.
3) Deaths- Flu (38,000) vs COVID (120,000). These are the most shocking statistics. Even though the typical Flu season causes 13x more infections than the current COVID pandemic, COVID has already cause 3x more deaths. The case fatality rate for the Flu is 0.13%, meaning that for every 1,000 people infected, 1 person will die. The case fatality rate for COVID is 5.26%, meaning that for every 1,000 people infected, 52 people will die. You are 50x more likely to die from COVID than the Flu.
So What if We Didn’t Social Distance?
Short version is that nobody knows for sure since we’d need to replicate our exact conditions on Earth and have one planet practice social distancing while the other carried on normal life.
But here’s what we do know. COVID-19 is more contagious than the Flu. So the term is called Ro (“R naught”), and it is the reproductive number for the virus. For the Flu, the typical Ro is 1.5. For COVID, the Ro is 2.5. So for each person infected with the Flu we’d expect them to transmit the virus to 1.5 people, and for COVID, each person would transmit the infection to 2.5 people. I know, I know, how can 1/2 a person catch the virus? Just stick with me.
So what if we didn’t do this whole social distancing thing? Short version is that it’d be a complete mess. Our healthcare infrastructure would be completely overwhelmed and the number of death would be in the millions. Remember those charts above? Below are numbers that we could expect if we don’t continue to social distance.
COVID-19 without social distancing:
1) Infections- instead of 2.3 million we’d be looking at 50 million
2) Hospitalizations- instead of 232,000 we’d have over 5 million. Currently roughly 1/3 of patients hospitalized with COVID require ICU care, so we’d expect that 1.6 million people would require ICU care. This would present a major challenge to healthcare systems as there are only ~100,000 ICU beds in the U.S. This mismatch in resources vs needs would likely result in a significantly higher case fatality rate above the current 5.26%
3) Deaths- instead of 120,000 we have over 2.6 million deaths at that’s IF we had the resources that we need. Given our hospital resource limitations I’d expect this number to increase by 5-10x, resulting in 10-20 million deaths.
So What’s the Take Home Message?
KEEP SOCIAL DISTANCING, WEAR YOUR MASK & WASH THOSE HANDS!!!!!
Written by Dr. Tony Olivero, 6/28/20
Pediatric Critical Care Physician
Co-founder & CEO, Inspired Biometrics