In 2020, there were a handful of child flu deaths. No new flu vaccines. Our NPIs like distancing and masking and school closures and sick days and lockdowns and ventilation OBLITERATED flu.
around 200 kids died of covid that year (about 800 this year) in the US.
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around 200 kids died of covid that year (about 800 this year) in the US.
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Comparing the death toll of the flu WITHOUT any mitigation efforts to COVID-19 WITH mitigation efforts is neither fair nor scientific. By the very fact above, we know COVID is MANY TIMES deadlier than the flu for kids.
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There were no vaccines in 2020 for kids. there was only our intense NPIs, doing their thing, mostly preventing kids dying of both COVID and FLU but many times moreso for flu. Absolutely kicked FLUs wimpy little butt.
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If the "number of kids didn't alarm us in 2019" argument is your tactic, maybe you don't recognize people for many years have done things they shouldn't and kids have died because someone worked at a hospital with flu sx or sneezed on a baby all willy-nilly.
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Unless you're a bizarre "well 1000 died of an old thing last year so 300 this year of a new thing is ok" person, the comparison of COVID to FLU *must* be in the same year, or you are adding variables you cannot disambiguate.
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And i don't know a single pediatrician who watched a flu/RSV kid die/get ICU sick in 2017 that didn't make some comment on how frustrating it is that we can stop it with masks/sick day policies but we just don't.
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If you are a "pandemic communicator" and you rely on 2017 FLU/RSV vs 2020 COVID in an argument that COVID isn't as deadly as the flu, you are not good at your job.
(NB: it very well could be that THIS variant omicron, is less deadly or as deadly as the flu, but there is NO argument to be made that COVID as a whole is, especially when based off of yearly data sets like CDC)
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