The novel coronavirus presents far more fatal risk than seasonal flu or car crashes and has fast become ‘one of the leading causes of death in the United States’.
That is the opinion of a fellow at the National Review Institute, who is backed by a statistical analysis by the modern science and technology journal, The New Atlantis.
In an April 21 article, the National Review looks at a series of other viruses and human-based disasters and compares their sheer body count against that of Covid-19.
The National Review is swift to remind those politically partisan clusters who say Covid-19 is no more lethal than the flu that we are still in the ‘first wave’ of the pandemic and the time scale so far is much shorter.
This chart shows deaths per capita for the United States from different years, demonstrating comparative data between common causes which coronavirus has recently been compared to
A nurse adjusts intravenous drug dosages being given to a Covid-19 patient on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) floor at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, in Brooklyn
‘Although there is still much we don’t know about the coronavirus, we know enough to say that it is far more dangerous and deadly than the flu,’ said the National Review.
In the 12 months between 2009-10 and after some 61 million infections, the H1N1 swine flu had struck dead 12,500 Americans.
At the height of its power, seasonal flu killed some 34,200 Americans between 2018–19.
And in 2019, around 38,800 US citizens were killed in car crashes.
However, as of March 20 of this year, coronavirus had killed 225 people. And yet by April 20, it had claimed more than 42,000 American lives.
Today, confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US stand at 827,093, and some 45,435 people in this country dead.
‘Despite the rapidity with which the coronavirus has killed tens of thousands of Americans, some on the right have continued to argue that the pandemic will end up being no more serious than a bad flu season,’ argued the report.
A medical worker at the NYC Health Hospital is seen in front of the Covid-19 testing site in Queens
Bill Bennett, conservative pundit and former United States Secretary of Education under Reagan, appeared on Fox News last week claiming, ‘we’re going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.’
Bennett pointed to an IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) model by the University of Washington that estimated coronavirus would likely kill around 60,000 Americans and that seasonal flu killed 61,000 between 2017–18, a ‘particularly bad’ flu season.
The National Review is quick to point to a recent comment by editor Rich Lowry who said, ‘if we are going to have 60,000 deaths with people not leaving their homes for more than a month, the number of deaths obviously would have been higher — much higher — if everyone had gone about business as usual.’
The IHME model only accounts for the estimated death toll during the virus’ first wave, and the nation will still be ‘vulnerable to infection after the first wave passes,’ the report adds.
There are well over 800,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US— accounting for around 0.24 percent of the population. But former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates anywhere between one and five percent of Americans may have already been infected.
‘But that’s far short of the 50 percent to 70 percent required to achieve herd immunity,’ the report adds. ‘The seasonal flu, by contrast, infected 12 percent of the American population last year because we have a flu vaccine and some more immunity from previous infections.
‘Not only does the new coronavirus have the potential to infect many more people than the seasonal flu does, it appears to kill a greater percentage of those infected.’
Seasonal flu struck down 0.1 percent of people, and the coronavirus has already killed the same percentage of the entire population of the state of New York.
‘That may seem like a small percentage,’ the report says. ‘But imagine the entire country getting hit as badly as New York state: 0.1 percent of the US population is 330,000 people.
‘And there’s no reason to believe that New York’s current death toll marks the upper limit of the virus’s lethality.’
In other areas of the world, coronavirus killed 0.2 percent of the entire population of the Italian province of Bergamo (1.1 million) in one month, though the number may be much higher.
‘There were 4,000 more deaths in Bergamo in March 2020 than the average number of deaths in March in recent years, but only 2,000 of those deaths were attributed to confirmed Covid-19 cases,’ the report says.
‘The virus has killed 100 Italian doctors. That doesn’t happen during a bad flu season. The virus has killed 30 employees of the New York City Police Department. That doesn’t happen during a bad flu season,’ it adds.
The National Review also points to the official death toll in Wuhan, China where it is surmised the virus first started. It stands at 2,500, according to the regime, in a city of 10 million. ‘But there are reports that the true death toll in Wuhan was more than 40,000 people. That’s 0.4 percent of the city’s entire population,’ the report says.
‘Almost all conservatives are skeptical of Communist China’s official coronavirus death toll,’ it adds. ‘Why, then, do some think that the coronavirus is not much more deadly than the flu?
‘Did Communist China, a regime not known for valuing human life, shut down much of its economy for a couple of months because of a bad flu? Or did Communist leaders fear that without the costly shutdown the virus would inflict much greater harm on their nation and threaten their grip on power?’
No country can afford the economic price of lockdown while a vaccine is developed, but the report urges a ‘proper understanding’ of Covid-19’s ‘past and present danger’.
‘Knowing that it is extremely unlikely that the threat will be gone once the first wave passes will help guide the government, businesses, and individuals to take precautions that will limit the virus’s death toll in the months to come,’ it says.
