I keep seeing this come up & it's just not correct. Here is a very good health writer confusing the "mortality rate" of the 1919 Spanish Flu with the "case fatality rate" (CFR) The mortality rate was ~2%, i.e. that percent of the world died of it. CFR was ~15%! 
In other words, of the ppl who got Spanish Flu, some 15% or 20% died from it (CFR). But about 2% of the world's population died from it (mortality rate). So people are looking at the 2% CFR of #coronavirus & comparing it to the 2% mortality rate of Spanish Flu, & that isn't right
Spanish Flu was more along the lines of SARS & MERS. Now, in the SARS epidemic, CFR estimates started out quite low, moved up to 2% for a while, then ended at 10%. Early responsible estimates for #COVID19 were 1% to 10%. So there's a outside chance it could still be like 1918 flu
Anyway, if we're going to do the Spanish Flu comparisons, we need to compare the right numbers & be in the right ballpark. Here is the source article for the quote in the OT: nytimes.com/2020/02/27/pod…
For reference on the Spanish Flu: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_f…
Anyway, this is just a PSA. Don't be that person who compares the Spanish Flu's ~2% global mortality rate with #COVID19's ~2% case fatality rate (that know of so far from some studies... still very much TBD tho). These are not the same numbers.
That's right. This is the wrong term. Mortality rate is percent of people in the world who died from this particular cause (cancer, car accidents, guns, whatever). Case fatality rate is percent of people /who got this illness/ who died from it.
A lot of journos who do good work on this beat are blowing this critical mortality rate vs. CFR distinction, & repeating the wrong #'s for Spanish Flu. I think I did this very early on before I looked up the 1918 numbers. So this is a friendly correction.
I may not have made this mistake publicly, but I know I had the wrong CFR in my mind for 1918 flu from seeing this (wrong) ~2% CFR repeated so many times. Then I saw someone correct another journo & looked it up for myself.
If you really want to lose some sleep over the lessons from the Spanish Flu, read the part of that Wikipedia entry about how it hit the world in waves, & the second wave of it was more deadly than the first.
The second wave was what killed the younger, healthy people.
The second wave was what killed the younger, healthy people.
For more on viral epidemics, waves, & if a warm spring is going to save us all, see these tweets from @eladgil:
@eladgil This stuff is just a reminder that we are dealing with a force of nature, & not some phenomenon of mass psychology like credit crisis or even war. We can talk & model & project, but we cannot predict. Nobody can. That's why you prepare -- because you truly can't know what's next.
@eladgil Our ancestors lived constantly with this level of uncertainty around what the natural world would do to them next. It's been a long time since those of us blessed to live in developed nations where mkts & tech smooth out the bumps have collectively grappled with this kind of risk
