The flu has killed 10,000 Americans as the world worries over coronavirus : Health

This is such a fucking stupid argument that I keep hearing. The standard flu doesn’t kill 2% of those infected. Here is the infection rate of common flu with 30 seconds of googling:

While the impact of flu varies, it places a substantial burden on the health of people in the United States each year. CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.

So let’s take a middle number. Let’s say 25 million. 2% of that would be 450k deaths per year if coronavirus had the same distribution as the common flu.

That’s why governments are responding seriously to this. It’s not a hard thing to understand.