Hardly anyone at this point is arguing that there actually is an issue. After all, flu is still a dangerous illness, esp. for certain groups of people, so even plainly calling this COVID thing "just a flu" is not equivalent to saying that it's not an issue. It's your framing of the phrase "just a flu", that makes it look like some kind of heresy or insult.
And, most importantly, why do you call out only journalists and politicians, while there are many perferctly credible people, - first of all, medical experts, - who keep saying, that the scale of panic is dumb? How about doing some reading and fact-checking before crying wolf?
A collection of fact-checked links to public statements and critical research about COVID-19, updated DAILY (scroll to bottom for the most recent additions):
It’s an insult. Covid-19 is in the best case 30 times as deadly as the flu while being twice as contagious. Calling it just a flu and downplaying it is actively causing thousands of deaths.
You didn’t post any fact. Only a meaningless link to Iceland numbers. Thanks for insinuating that I’m mentally unstable by the way. That is certainly a very stable and mature behaviour.
"just the flu" to me implies that we can treat it like the flu, i.e. go about life as usual and stay home if we catch it. It seems beyond obvious at this point that that's not the case. (Hopefully soon there will be a vaccine and it will become the case.)
But it literally is a strain of flu. And staying at home, sleeping and drinking a lot of water is exactly what the majority of people who contracted COVID are doing at the moment. Or do you believe that there are 1.3 million people in hospitals or cemeteries right now?
I'm not in the position to make such statements, but there is quite a number of medical professionals, who say exactly this: massive lockdowns of general population aren't necessary.
As for me, I personally believe that the medicine is worse than the disease in this case. We can be quite certain at this point that there will be lots of casualties from the economical disruption, and whether the unconstrained virus could have caused more suffering is a question to be answered.
I just don't think you are seriously asking for information, because there is shitload on the Web already, but rather mocking me (judging by your one-worded response, which is rude). But in case I'm wrong, here's a nice collection of links to begin with, updated daily: https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ Scroll to the bottom for most recent updates.
No, it literally is not. The flu is caused by influenza. Covid19 is caused by sars-cov-2, a relative of SARS-CoV which caused SARS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... ). It is also a (more distant) relative of HCoV-OC43 which is one of the many viruses that cause the cold.
The problems that influenza and sars-cov-2 cause for us are pretty different: Influenza mutates fairly quickly so we're not able to stop it completely with our otherwise highly effective vaccines, while even though they mutate comparatively much slower we don't have any effective drug treatments for coronaviruses: Some are not dangerous enough to have been economically interesting to develop treatments for while others were stopped by non-drug interventions (like the sick people dying too quickly and the detection of fever before the virus was highly communicable).
Interestingly there's a variant that attacks dogs that's a bit more severe and people have actually developed a vaccine for that variant. Well, it might also be that it's a lot easier, regulations wise, to develop a vaccine for dogs than for humans. It works great but your dog has to have a booster every year or two to keep full immunity.
A vaccine has already been developed for cats. It turned out vaccinated cats suffer greater from the nCov due to increased reaction from the immune system.
No, it isn’t. The flu doesn’t require hospitalisation in 15-20% of the cases and doesn’t have a mortality rate of 1% in the best case. Please stop spreading misinformation.
What I have to comment?
We know what is the death rate in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, South Korea. 1500 cases is ridiculously low to take any conclusion, they are far behind the curve.
Then why you post utterly meaningless numbers based on 1500 reported cases far behind the curve and ask for my comment? And please stop insulting me, you have gone too far.
Dr Ioannidis, for one example, thinks that Iceland's numbers are actually representative in contrast to US, Spain, Italy, etc. He's an expert, what reasons do you have to not at least consider his opinion (and many others') as viable?
And it's not my fault that you're so touchy to be insulted by opinions that challenge the ones you hold. There's hardly any valour in throwing downvotes left and right on every post by the person you disagree with either.
You see, only a few months ago for the majority of people the word "flu" was a perferctly fine umbrella term for all of these viruses, including multiple coronaviruses. Now everyone is an expert virusologist with rigorous fervor for miniscule details. This is silly and drives us into the wrong direction, because the actual illness is not very different (it's a fact), but the amount of attention payed to it leads to huge overreaction. Oh, it's a relative of SARS, god forbid, oh my god, we're all going to die! Bullshit.
I was using the word "flu" in the broader sense. People commonly refer to virus-caused colds as simply flu. So what I was trying to say was that this is yet another virus that causes "flu".
Hardly anyone at this point is arguing that there actually is an issue. After all, flu is still a dangerous illness, esp. for certain groups of people, so even plainly calling this COVID thing "just a flu" is not equivalent to saying that it's not an issue. It's your framing of the phrase "just a flu", that makes it look like some kind of heresy or insult.
And, most importantly, why do you call out only journalists and politicians, while there are many perferctly credible people, - first of all, medical experts, - who keep saying, that the scale of panic is dumb? How about doing some reading and fact-checking before crying wolf?