All of those are great but COVID has done that in weeks.
38,000 people die every year in crashes on US roads. COVID deaths are at 39k and the first COVID-19 death was on Feb. 29. 50 days ago.
38,000 people die every year in crashes on US roads. COVID deaths are at 39k and the first COVID-19 death was on Feb. 29. 50 days ago.
Also, it's not a fair comparison between the flu and COVID because the flu has that unfortunate feature known as horizontal gene transfer. That's why you can get re-infected by the flu each year, and why in spite of a massive vaccination campaign the flu causes 45,000,000 illnesses each year in the US alone (and 60,000 deaths) -- and 650,000 deaths worldwide.
Each year. And each upcoming year. COVID will, based on what we know so far, happen once.
There is also a big assumption in considering the risk to be front-loaded. This is not the flu, but it could very well come back next year or in ten years in a different form. We just don't know yet this virus with enough confidence to do this assumption. Anyway, it is a bit strange that the ability for this virus to mutate next year would impact the risk of dying by going out tomorrow which, I think, the person your responded to was thinking about.
Finally, you're saying the flu deaths this year is double what the coronavirus has done, but again the uncertainty is high: the CDC estimation for the flu is from 24,000 to 62,000 deaths this season [1]. So it could be the double, but it could be actually lower. Let's not do things like chosing the estimate that better suits the argument without saying it's a high end of the estimate.
[1] - https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Americas-2019-2020-flu-sea...
There has been no evidence of substantial mutations so far in COVID. There's no evidence that COVID will come back in a new and different form, any more than there's evidence I'll come back next week as a velociraptor. I mean, it could happen, but it's not something I'll plan for until I start sprouting scales and and a giant tail. Mutations are pretty random and the vast majority of mutations are harmful to the virus.
It's worth considering we live with coronaviridae all the time, something like 15% of the common cold is attributable to coronaviridae. [2] There's as much evidence of the common cold becoming Ebola as there is of me becoming a velociraptor.
The flu death range is likely more to do with how good a job we do guessing which the predominant strain will be in a given year, as the flu vaccine efficacy rate ranges from 10% to 60% each year. [1]
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies....
[2] https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_ca...