to be fair it certainly can and does. The 2017/2018 influenza pandemic was probably the worst one in a decade, with 35 million infections, 700 000 hospitalizations and 60k deaths, and people for a while were treated in tents and a state of emergency was declared in Alabama, and Southern California and Texas had to turn away patients.
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
From the descriptions there and coming out of Italy it should be clear that COVID-19 is much worse than the worst flu we've seen in a decade.
The only thing keeping deaths low to this point is that it isn't as widespread.
Nevertheless, it's not a flu.
And I'd actually also disagree that this is 'nowhere near as bad' as COVID-19. In countries like Germany or South Korea the death toll with high rates of testing appears to be somewhere in the 0.2 - 1% range. That's something I would argue is a difference in quantity rather than quality, with the dangers lying in the aggregate disease burden and vulnerable populations in particular.
It seems like the nature of the overloading is different.
In particular, from those reports you mentioned, it doesn't seem like staff had to decide which patients to treat or not.
With COVID-19 we are hearing reports of some patients not being treated because there is not enough capacity (either staff or equipment) and so the death rates can be very high as many people receive inadequate treatment.
mis•in•for•ma•tion ► n. Wrong information; false account or intelligence. n. Untrue or incorrect information. n. Information that is incorrect.
I disagree.
Even if a statement is technically correct it can be designed to (or can accidentally) mislead people into coming to the wrong conclusion.
From the start you were advocating the conclusion that this "will do just the same as any other flu" and then compared total deaths to date in support of that conclusion.
The conclusion is misinformed because the comparison is not valid.
For it to be a valid comparison, as others have stated in the thread, we need to compare the projected cases and deaths NOT the current deaths as you have done.
Stating the numbers the way you have, uncritically and without the relevant context, is misinformation because it is misleading.
My point is that you should compare projected number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 to the flu.
If you do, it's clear that this is not just another flu.
I'm not sure what aspect of that will lead to overwhelmed hospital systems and massive deaths.
The advice I've been hearing is that
- if you have COVID-19 symptoms, self isolate (and lots of areas are moving to 'shelter in place' style restrictions in any case)
- if you are in an at-risk population, self isolate
- if you've been in contact with COVID-19, or travelled, self isolate
There is some concern over when to test, mostly because there is a shortage of kits in some places.
The new virus can be contained, at least could have been though perhaps it's too late for that. The only thing keeping the deaths so low to this point has been the containment efforts.
The flu does not overrun an entire country's hospital system like COVID-19 has done to Italy.
It is misinformation to blindly compare total deaths between two diseases like you are.