I'm asking where we draw the line. Yes the flu is less severe than COVID-19. The question is not which is worse. It is how many lives do we need to save with these measures in order to make it "worth it"? Who determines that? How do we determine that?
We apparently decided it is worth it for COVID-19. Ok, but then why not for the flu. It kills people too, just not as many. What about something in between the flu in COVID in terms of lethality?
Appendicitis? Stroke? Car accident? Sorry, the hospital is full of COVID patients, we can't take you in. Go home, lie down, see if it gets better.
This is the scenario we're trying to avoid. If the flu would do that, we'd have lockdowns for it too.
Literally because of "just not as many" part. Yes, real world policies do some cold calculations about "how many people die" and have arbitrary lines. Arbitrary lines are actually ok. Better then arbitrary line on either "never ever" or "totally all the time" extreme. Also, we literally close schools when flu get out of control in some area - for a week or so and that is enough for flu to get under control. There is also huge push for flu vaccines each year. It is not true that no flu management is done, there is a lot of flu management going on.
Like, I dont know whether it is consequences of two party system, but the whole "we either lock everything for every reason or never nothing at all" and "we cant possibly think in probabilities and death rates and nuance" is frankly, idiotic.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/01/24/Hospitals-overwhe...
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-flu-demand-2018...
https://www.dispatchhealth.com/blog/ers-are-overwhelmed-with...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/overwhelmed-by-flu-cases-some-e...
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/health/flu-surveillance-c...
In Italy and Spain, aged care centres were abandoned by Eastern European workers fleeing the country before border closure, leaving residents ill cared for.
In New York, symptomatic patients were ordered back into aged care homes to free up hospital space.
These conditions would not have occurred without hysteria and excessive fear.
COVID in Sweden is about as deadly as the 2009 flu wave: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-...
Sweden is on track for an annual number of deaths in 2020 mostly the same as prior years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...
Sweden, through early November, has as many deaths as it has had in its worst entire years before. And Swedens death numbers increase beyond the current year, as they attribute more deaths towards the previous year in the beginning of a year.
Sweden is on track to have 10-20% more deaths than normal.
They do it just isn't covered as much as anything covid related.
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
Same with the number of deaths. 65,000 in a really bad flu season in the US with hundreds of millions exposed to it, and Covid already has exceed that with only about 20% exposed to the virus.