All this because of a virus that is just a bad flu.
Wrong. Again. Lets see that makes it 0 for 160 attempts.
COVID Far More Lethal Than Flu, Data Shows
By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Dec. 18, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- COVID-19 is far more harmful and deadly than the seasonal flu, new studies confirm.
Researchers analyzed U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs data on more than 3,600 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Feb. 1 and June 17 of this year, and more than 12,600 hospitalized with
the flu between Jan. 1, 2017 and Dec. 31, 2019. The average age of patients in both groups was 69.
The death rate among COVID-19 patients was 18.5%, while it was 5.3% for those with the flu. Those with COVID were nearly five times more likely to die than flu patients, according to the study published online Dec. 15 in the
BMJ.
COVID-19 patients with the highest risk of death included those aged 75 and older who also had chronic
kidney disease or
dementia, and Blacks who were
obese, or who had
diabetes or kidney disease.
The study also found that COVID-19 patients were four times more likely to require breathing machines, nearly 2.5 times more likely to be admitted to intensive care, and stayed in the hospital an average of three days longer than flu patients.
A separate study from France, published online Dec. 17 in
The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, arrived at similar conclusions: Nearly twice as many people were admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 at the height of the
pandemic than were for influenza at the peak of the 2018/2019 flu season. And the death rate was almost three times higher.
The French team, led by Dr. Pascale Tubert-Bitter, research director at L'Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm), and Catherine Quantin, from the University Hospital of Dijon and Inserm, compared data from COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital over a two-month period in spring 2020 with influenza patients admitted over a three-month period during the seasonal flu outbreak of 2018/2019.
"The finding that the COVID-19 death rate was three times higher than for seasonal influenza is particularly striking when reminded that the 2018/2019 flu season had been the worst in the past five years in France in terms of number of deaths," Quantin noted in a Lancet news release.