On the Flu being worse than or equal to COVID-19

 One of the pillars of the anti-mask protests is to shrug off COVID-19 as being no worse than the seasonal flu. 

The way I see it, there are 3 elements to consider; infectious rate, severity and mortality. For the flu to be as bad or worse, it would need to either match or exceed COVID-19 in all of those categories or exceed considerably in one of those areas. So, how does the seasonal flu stack up?

Pretty bad actually.

Severity is the first one we'll look at. Incidence of severe cases of the flu are INCREDIBLY low except in seniors and the incredibly young. In the general population it is almost unheard of if you're not immune-compromised to have something labelled as a severe case of the flu. And yet with COVID-19 the rates are much, MUCH higher. In some at risk groups severe cases are more common than not. Whereas while the flu does pose a substantial risk, most at risk groups will still be quite likely to have mild flu symptoms.

Mortality is next. Technically, this is an extension of severity. But, I think death definitely deserves to stand as a special case. And, here again, COVID-19 wins. Hand down. For the same number of infections COVID-19 will kill multiples more. It has even claimed the lives of younger, seemingly healthy individuals with no pre-conditions. Something basically unheard of with the seasonal flu variants.

Which leaves the infection rate. The seasonal flu COULD be considered as deadly or worse, if it were substantially more infectious. And it would need to win by a large margin given how far behind it is on mortality and severity.

So, how can we gauge relative infectivity? Well, many countries actually keep close tabs on flu rates, and virtually everyone is keeping tabs on COVID-19 rates. So... surely someone has crunched the numbers!

And of course they have. In the link above you can see graphs from a few countries tracing the relative growth of both infections. If influenza was AS or MORE infectious than COVID-19, than given it's wider spread out in the community to start with, it should have outpaced COVID-19 in terms of rate of growth.

Spoiler if you didn't look at the article; it didn't. It didn't come ANYWHERE NEAR. In fact, COVID-19 measures effectively stopped flu season in its tracks. Even as COVID-19 cases spiked. This doesn't leave any room for doubt or speculation. COVID-19 is orders of magnitude more infectious than influenza.

In fact... COVID-19 is SOOOOO much better at spreading than the seasonal flu, that the seasonal flu would need to kill and hospitalize people in INSANE numbers to be considered worse than COVID-19.