Editor:
With all due respect to Bruce Eagles (“No reason to panic,” Letters, March 13), seasonal flu statistics are irrelevant to the threat we are now facing from COVID-19.
Let us consider what is relevant:
1) The mortality rate for seasonal influenza is around 0.1% (1/10th of one per cent). The COVID-19 mortality rate for people in their 50s currently stands at 1.3%. For people in their 70s, it’s 8% mortality, and for those 80 and over, the mortality rate is 14.8%. In other words, COVID-19 is a much more serious illness than seasonal flu, especially for older people.
2) Each year, roughly 5% to 20% of North Americans get seasonal flu. Public health officials have stated that 30% to 70% of Canadians may contract COVID-19. That’s 11 to 25 million people, with 10 times as many cases south of the border. According to the CDC, the new corona virus also appears to be somewhat more contagious than seasonal flu.
3) As up to 20% of COVID-19 infections require some form of hospital care (from ER visits to time spent in ICU), this pandemic has the potential to completely overwhelm our already strained health care system if we don’t aggressively act to limit infection. It broke Italy’s health care system in just a couple of weeks.
4) Unlike influenza, we have no vaccines or treatments for COVID-19, and likely won’t for quite some time.
Citing seasonal flu statistics to minimize the current pandemic (as many have done) is not only poor reasoning, it encourages apathy and complacency which endangers us all. Blind panic is never a helpful reaction, but we’re in a genuine crisis situation. A sense of urgency, even alarm, is quite appropriate. If the best case scenario wins the day, it will only be because we acted as though the worst case was a real possibility.
MJ Lord, Sechelt
