See: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

Search for "Table 1: Estimated influenza disease burden, by age group — United States, 2018-2019 influenza season"

I skimmed through that so please point it out if I missed it, but the numbers don't seem to account for comorbidities. The question was whether COVID-19 is more dangerous than the flu to healthy young people not all young people.

Well even with your qualifier of "no comorbidities", the evidence is pretty unanimous that Covid and Influenza are not even the same ballpark. Worrying about a healthy young person dying of Covid is more akin to worrying about a healthy young person dying of cancer than it is to bacterial meningitis or something.

As I've said elsewhere, Influenza is defined by being deadly to the very young and very old, and so-so to those in the middle. Meaning that healthy young people do regularly die of the flu (it's still rare in absolute numbers, but it happens WAY more than covid).

Unfortunately, and I know people read this stuff and their quack heuristics start firing, the reason people are so afraid about Covid's impact on young people is because the mainstream media has intentionally promulgated a narrative that "young people are at risk too" because they fear that otherwise young people wouldn't submit to glorified house arrest for months straight.

Yes, young people get _infected_ by sars-cov-2, but they do not develop deadly cases of covid in any appreciable numbers. You really should be worrying far more about the flu as it pertains to a college-aged demographic.

EDIT: I do need to find some sources for you though. I saw some NY data broken down by comorbidites but am having trouble finding it.

> Unfortunately, and I know people read this stuff and their quack heuristics start firing, the reason people are so afraid about Covid's impact on young people is because the mainstream media has intentionally promulgated a narrative that "young people are at risk too" because they fear that otherwise young people wouldn't submit to glorified house arrest for months straight.

They've reported that because young people who very likely won't die from COVID-19 (they may still need to be put on oxygen and may have lifelong effects from it, but they likely won't die) can still spread it to those that will. Further, they'll put more strain on the health system, and the ability to care for COVID-19 patients is a big determinant in the fatality rate. Everyone needs to stay practice social distancing and shelter, because everyone can carry and spread.

Young people are also drastically less likely to get severe disease, and drastically less likely to be hospitalized, see FIGURE 1. [1] I find it very suspicious that young people who don't go to the hospital with severe disease would require oxygen or end up with life-long lung injuries.

> Everyone needs to stay practice social distancing and shelter, because everyone can carry and spread.

Sweden has demonstrated at national scale that's not the case. [2,3]

The reality is about 60% of us are going to get it one way or the other, so let's control which 60%, and in what order, and on what timeline before everyone stops listening and just walks out.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-19/sweden-sa...

[3] https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-are-we-underestimati...

> I find it very suspicious that young people who don't go to the hospital with severe disease would require oxygen or end up with life-long lung injuries.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/09/my-near-d...

Or I don't know, Google ventilator effects. Lung scarring. Young people get this, and it hurts them, maybe forever. It's not common, but it's absolutely not never, and you can still spread the virus if you're asymptomatic. Seems like people should try and avoid getting it!

> Sweden has demonstrated at national scale that's not the case.

Sweden is so unlike the US in so many ways, this is a worthless anecdote. Imagine the differences in demographics, density, culture, literally everything.

> The reality is about 60% of us are going to get it one way or the other, so let's control which 60%, and in what order, and on what timeline before everyone stops listening and just walks out.

It's by no means certain 60% of us will get it. Especially if we do what we should do and build a competent testing and tracing system. The attitude that this is inevitable is lazy and puts thousands of lives in jeopardy.

Permanent restrictions, drastic social change, and large contact tracing infrastructure might keep it under the herd immunity threshold of ~60%. It might not, too.

But you can't let up at any point, because it'll still be endemic and ready to explode up to that herd immunity threshold.

I prefer approaches that get us to that 60% in an orderly fashion-- staying short of healthcare overload, and preventing as much infection in the vulnerable as possible.

Just because you've not heard about it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Seemingly healthy young people die from the flu each year.

Since Feb 1, 204 people from 15-34 have been confirmed to have died from COVID-19 in the US. 162 people from age 15-34 have been confirmed to have died from influenza in the same period.

I don't think you'll find either statistic broken down by comorbidities.

Not sure why you added the lower limit at 15. The two high risk age groups from influenza are 65+ and under 5. If I recall correctly, pediatric flu deaths are the only ones tracked by the CDC (for other age groups they just use statistical estimates).

There is data on comorbities with the flu from prior years. This article says half of deaths had no preexisting medical conditions.

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/141/4/e201729...

And the deaths among healthy young people from both kinds of viruses is commonly blamed on the cytokine storm:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711683/

I picked 15-34 because it corresponds with the data table I cited from the CDC, which lists confirmed deaths from each for the time period. It's already cited and linked, but here's it again: table 2, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

Note that a few of the deaths are -both- COVID-19 and influenza.

You mind sharing the source on those numbers because the total deaths is somewhat meaningless without the number of infections which I imagine is much higher for the flu? Even those absolute numbers show total deaths being just over 25% higher for COVID-19 than the flu.

Table 2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

The statement you differed with is "The third option is, when you take into account that it's approximately as bad as the flu for folks under 40," You're ignoring data in order to make a wishy-washy statement that it must be much worse for people under 40 based on anecdotes you hear.

I don't agree flu infections were higher for those 2 months, either. Distancing has been spectacularly effective against influenza, since it has a lower Rt in the absence of controls. Under 1% of influenza surveillance tests are positive right now, which is a level usually only seen in the middle of summer.

Our best guess for overall infection fatality rate is about 0.3%, double or 3x influenza (because of the very high death rate in the elderly), but COVID-19 deaths overall have been 4x influenza in that time period, indicating that COVID-19 prevalence is higher.

First off, all those numbers are once again absolute deaths and not related to case numbers so my prior complaint still stands. If you look at the first chart, you will see that COVID-19 deaths didn't start becoming a problem until March. Distancing practices were not widespread until mid-March. Meanwhile flu deaths weren't dramatically cut until the most recent timeframe. So taking into consideration both the first chart and the second chart that breaks out the numbers by age range, there seems to be an implication that COVID-19 deaths are much higher for young people in recent weeks. Therefore the absolute numbers would look totally different if March 1st was the starting point. I really don't see anything here that demonstrates the flu is as dangerous as COVID-19 for young people.

We've said approximately as dangerous. It clearly is in a very similar ballpark. We don't have enough data right know to know if it's twice as dangerous for people under age 30, or half as dangerous.

(We do already know it's -way less dangerous- for people under age 18).

Ok, maybe this dispute is based on different definitions. I don't think 2X is "approximately", but I do agree that we don't have enough data right now to know the exact difference so I can't say for sure that COVID-19 is more than 2X as dangerous.

I also agree that COVID-19 does appear to be way less dangerous for the under 18 group. However practically none of the under 18 group is able to isolate themselves away from the 18 and over group so there is no real societal benefit to this distinction.

> I don't think 2X is "approximately", but I do agree that we don't have enough data right now to know the exact difference so I can't say for sure that COVID-19 is more than 2X as dangerous.

I think we have enough data to exclude more than 2x. The range of potential danger has influenza's risk right in the middle of it.

> I also agree that COVID-19 does appear to be way less dangerous for the under 18 group. However practically none of the under 18 group is able to isolate themselves away from the 18 and over group so there is no real societal benefit to this distinction.

There's a huge societal benefit to this distinction, because if children are at relatively low risk, and also do not seem to be index cases very often for how COVID-19 is spread to households, schools can reopen. This is different from most diseases, where schools are often a key mechanism of disease spread. e.g. see https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.26.20044826v...

That's pretty bad considering only perhaps 5% of the population has been penetrated with covid-19 vs 100% for the flu. Assuming a 70% eventual population infection rate, using your data we should expect to see around 2900 deaths in that age cohort. Annualized flu numbers would be around 500. So covid-19 by your data is 6x more fatal.

100% of the population was not "penetrated" with the flu between February 1 and now. Evidence implies a similar proportion of the population was "penetrated" with COVID-19 and the flu in that time. This implies a similar death rate for COVID-19 and influenza in those age groups, as the poster said.

Indeed, influenza has been greatly impacted by distancing. The surveillance numbers for influenza are lower than you'll ever see for this time of year.

I can't exclude it's twice as bad as the flu (or half as bad). But even those broadly agree with the poster's statement.

I found the link I was looking for. Here’s some COVID numbers: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d...

I’m on mobile right now so won’t be able to look up the influenza numbers, but perhaps you could find some quality data on influenza mortality in those without comorbidities?