It’s a popular argument heard at protests denouncing state shutdowns, fueled by those who say news outlets are overreacting to coronavirus:
The flu kills more people than coronavirus. Why shut down the economy for this?
Here are several reasons why coronavirus is more dangerous than the flu — and why extra precautions are needed:
Coronavirus is much more contagious.
A person with the flu infects an average of about 1.28 other people. A person with novel coronavirus infects an average of about 2 to 3 other people.
Coronavirus has killed at a much faster rate.
Between October 2019 and early April 2020, the flu killed up to 331 people a day, according to the preliminary CDC numbers.
From February 6 through April 30, the coronavirus killed an average of more than 739 people per day in the US.
Coronavirus can be spread for many days without symptoms.
With the flu, people typically start feeling sick one to four days after infection, with symptoms often showing up within two days, the CDC says. That means people will know they’re sick fairly soon and will likely stay home.
But with coronavirus, symptoms typically appear four or five days after exposure, and the incubation lasts up to 14 days.
You can get a flu vaccine but not a coronavirus vaccine.
Unlike the flu, there’s no option to get a vaccine for the coronavirus to protect against infection or to reduce the severity of symptoms. At the earliest, it’ll be months before a coronavirus vaccine might become publicly available.
