During the winter of 2016-’17 nearly 25,000 Italian citizens died from the seasonal flu. No one blinked.
In well over 3 months since its purported inception, the COVID-19 virus is claimed to be responsible for less than 50,000 deaths globally (as of the 1st of April).
Every year, about 500,000 people from across the world die from the five-month-long seasonal flu.
During the last pandemic, the swine flu (H1N1) killed up to 575,000 people.
This was interestingly classified as “fairly mild” for total pandemic deaths in 2012 (ABC NEWS).
Image Source: ABC NEWS
A closer look at Italy
A recent study (Rosano et al., 2019) indicates that 68,000 Italians died from the flu during the 2013-’14 to 2016-’17 flu seasons.
Specifically, there were 24,981 flu deaths in 2016-’17 and 20,259 seasonal flu fatalities occurred in 2014-’15.
These high death rates from the flu epidemic didn’t receive global attention.
Image Source: Rosano et al., 2019
Italy currently (1 April, 2020) has surpassed 13,100 deaths attributed to COVID-19 infections.
But it is highly likely the COVID-19 virus has been circulating throughout Italy for months, not weeks.
According to two Stanford medical professors, an entire Italian town of 3,300 was tested for the virus on the 6th of March (2020). 2.7% tests came back positive, which was 130 times greater an infection rate than the infection rate confirmed by that date.
Image Source: the Blaze
What this means is the infection rate is perhaps two orders of magnitude more extensive than we know.
Accurate calculation of death rates can only be inferred from dividing the deaths by the total number of infected cases – not just the confirmed ones.
Consequently, the death rate from infection could be far lower than we currently imagine…on par with, or even lower than, the seasonal flu.
via NoTricksZone
April 2, 2020 at 03:42AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
Reblogged this on uwerolandgross.
LikeLike