A new report shows why we can't compare COVID-19 numbers to flu numbers.
By the Numbers, COVID-19 Was Never 'Like the Flu'
THURSDAY, May 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump announced that Americans need not worry because the new coronavirus was "like a flu."
Now, 1.4 million cases and more than 84,000 COVID-19 deaths later, a new report finds the comparison was never valid.
"Public officials continue to draw comparisons between seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2 mortality, often in an attempt to minimize the effects of the unfolding pandemic," wrote Dr. Jeremy Faust, of Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Carlos del Rio, of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
But those comparisons are "apples and oranges," the physicians reported in an article published May 14 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.