But it hasn't killed more than the typical flu.
The death rate of any illness, is the total number of people infected, by the number of deaths.
What we on the right-wing have all known for long time, is that the number of actual infected is dramatically higher than the number of known confirmed infected.
They are checking blood from blood donations, and found many show signs that the person who donated the blood has already had Covid-19. People that didn't go to hospital, or even didn't have any symptoms.
That means that the death rate, is lower than the flu. Do we shut down the economy for an illness less deadly than the flu? Of course not. Ridiculous.
Instead we should have simply isolated people who were sick... just like Japan and Sweden.... and we should have protected nursing homes, where the most-at-risk people were.
Half the deaths in New York City, were in Nursing homes where Cuomo forced known Covid patients back into those places, and killed everyone.
That should have been the focus. Not trying to shut down half the economy.
Yes, COVID-19 has killed far more than the typical flu. It could have a lower death rate and kill more than the flu. It would just need to infect more people. The flu is estimated to have killed an average of under 40,000 each flu season in the US. COVID-19 is estimated at over 120,000. The death rate doesn't change that.
Whether the government reactions to COVID-19 were appropriate is, in large part, a separate question. Certainly it has been far from perfect at many levels.
I think you are missing the point.
Yes, it has killed more people in the first year. And the same would be true of the flu, if this was the first year of the flu.
Let's reverse the situation as an example. Let's pretend that for the last hundred years we had Covid, and the flu didn't exist until this year.
What would be the difference? Covid we would have, from years of being exposed, a fairly good immunity to it, so that it infected fewer people. Plus we would likely have vaccines for it, and better treatment.
Meanwhile, the flu, because we had never had it before... would fly through the population at amazing speed in the first year, because having never been exposed, it would have no trouble spreading.
However... the death rates would be pretty close to what they are now, but the number of deaths in the first year, would even higher than the 120,000 we have. Why? Because the flu would be a new novel virus, and we wouldn't have immunity to it. Not because it's more deadly... just because we have no treatment, or vaccine, or herd resistance.
What I'm saying isn't exactly Ph.D required stuff either. I'm bit surprised most people don't know this.
Take Smallpox. When Europeans unintentionally brought smallpox to Mexico, at that time throughout all of Europe, an estimated some 200,000 died of Smallpox a year. Mexico, which had no immunity to this new virus, wiped 8 Million people.
Same illness. Just people who had no resistance. The death rate didn't change, the spread changed, because it was a group of people with no immunity.
Covid is less deadly than the flu, from the best information we have now. The only difference is, we have resistance to the flu, and we don't... yet... to Covid.
It will spread through the population, resistance will be built up, and the numbers will subside.