> Well, a study of a German town showed 15% are already immune/have had it and a mortality rate of 0.37% vs the flu at 0.1%
You are comparing apples to oranges and calling it grapes.
It is 0.37% infection fatality rate (including clinically non-significant cases) vs flu 0.1% case fatality rate (from clinically significant cases). case fatality rate for covid-19 is much higher (say 2 % in Germany). Note that these are fatality rates, not mortality rates.
Second factor is that population has no imunity to SARS-CoV-2, while has some immunity to flu strains. Which means much more infected and therefore higher mortality rate even with the same fatality rates.
Overall, it seems to me that without any precautions it would be 10x-25x higher overal mortality (say 0.2 %) than seasonal influenza (say 0.01-0.02 %). Not great, not terrible.
Well, the link says 39-56 M illnesses, which means symptomatic infections (although some of them may be not diagnosed by doctor), while the 0.37% for covid-19 is just number of seroconversions (including asymptomatic infections, which are not considered illness), so not a comparable number.
With 39M-56M estimated cases, 24k-62k deaths and 330M population, you have 0.06%-0.11% fatality rate and 0.007%-0.018% mortality rate.
Less than 40% of cases result in any visit to a medical professional (# medical visits is about 0.4-0.5 of # cases, but some people will need >1 medical visit)
You are comparing apples to oranges and calling it grapes.
It is 0.37% infection fatality rate (including clinically non-significant cases) vs flu 0.1% case fatality rate (from clinically significant cases). case fatality rate for covid-19 is much higher (say 2 % in Germany). Note that these are fatality rates, not mortality rates.
Second factor is that population has no imunity to SARS-CoV-2, while has some immunity to flu strains. Which means much more infected and therefore higher mortality rate even with the same fatality rates.
Overall, it seems to me that without any precautions it would be 10x-25x higher overal mortality (say 0.2 %) than seasonal influenza (say 0.01-0.02 %). Not great, not terrible.