Charles Teves
- The coronavirus has a higher death rate than the flu
Writer and Walter C. Alvarez Award winner Roxanne Khamsi said that comparing the current coronavirus (COVID-19) to influenza is just not right.
Although it is true that flu has a higher body count than the 2019-nCov, American media sources have been downplaying the former saying that they should be more worried about getting flu shots and protecting themselves from it.
News website Axios said, “if you’re freaking out about coronavirus but you didn’t get a flu shot, you’ve got it backwards.”
The Daily Beast also added, ““Don’t worry about the new coronavirus, worry about the flu.”
Khamsi calls the entire downplaying of the current epidemic as “viral whataboutism.”
The Ebola epidemic was also downplayed by American media saying, “Ebola is bad. The flu is worse.”
Khamsi admitted that Ebola wasn’t that much of a problem in the US and that less than 10 people were affected in the country, but the whole purpose of these numbers was to just make the public less worried about the epidemic.
“But these whatabout statistics aren’t really meant to sharpen our vigilance around the flu, or even to encourage us toward higher rates of vaccination. They’re just supposed to calm us down and make us realize that we needn’t go to pieces over some other, more exotic-sounding disease.”
Ebola is still very much an issue in Africa, and recently, 3,000 different cases in Congo have been recorded since August. The good thing here is that a vaccine has been made available to combat the virus.
Panic can either be good or bad, like how fears over the coronavirus has caused a scarcity in facemasks.
“Stemming panic can be a righteous goal, especially when that panic is unfounded. In the meantime, panic has unintended, harmful consequences.”
There is still more research to be done in order to fully understand all the aspects of the 2019-nCov. Nearly 2,500 people worldwide have died, and 90% of those deaths were recorded in China. The trust of the public on media will eventually be destroyed if the latter keeps on downplaying the epidemic. Khamsi advised US media to not make the same mistake the Chinese government made.
“By telling people not to worry—or that we should worry ‘more’ about the flu—we may end up eroding public trust in the media. What happens if this coronavirus proves much worse than we expected? The Chinese government is already under scrutiny for downplaying the risks. Why would US news outlets want to repeat the error?”
The comparison of the 2019-nCov to the flu just makes no sense, especially when the media is stating the obvious numbers and analytics. The only reason why the flu has taken more lives is because it has been around since 1918, when it was discovered, and has taken over 50 million lives since. What’s more alarming is that the chances of dying from the current virus is higher than the flu.
“Flu can kill Amercans by the tens of thousands, but that’s because it’s been around so long and has had so much time to spread. Millions get the virus every year, and fewer than 0.1 percent of them perish from it. What’s the rate of death from the new coronavirus? No one can say for certain, but estimates have hovered at around 20 times the rate for influenza, or 2 percent.”
Experts are sure that 20 times might be a little of an exaggeration, but it could be close to that, and additionally, they are also sure that many deaths have gone unrecorded. The virus can be transferred from person to person, which is what the experts are advocating. The rate might fluctuate from time to time but there is still no certainty.
“It’s possible the spread will slow. Or else it might accelerate. In light of this uncertainty, perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to counsel everyone to “get a grippe” on their concerns.”
Comparing death rates of different epidemics don’t really do anything to contribute to the problem.
“When it comes to disease—and particularly infectious ones—it’s best to avoid pitting pathogens against one another in a sort of “mortality rate Olympics”. Mother Nature doesn’t let us choose, à la carte, which problems to digest and when. It’s more like she’s piling our plates with stuff we didn’t ask for and then adding to it even though we’re full.”
It is difficult to be concerned about something that you know is not coming your way anytime soon, but Khamsi says that we should care, and use our attribute of empathy.
“Still we shouldn’t let ourselves be swindled of our capacity for empathy. As rhetoric, viral whataboutism tends to paper over the suffering of other people.
“When news articles tell us that we should focus on the flu instead, they tacitly allow us to ignore this suffering in China. When they suggest that the so-called ‘2019nCov’ coronavirus appears to be of greatest threat to the old and already infirm, they encourage us to ignore the plights of people in those groups, and take an ageist and ableist point of view.”
Khamsi suggests that we should focus more on fixing the problem instead of making comparisons. The WHO needs more budget for certain interventions linked with the virus.
“The World Health Organization has said that it needs $675 million to cover the cost of its response plan to the new coronavirus from February through April.”
4 billion dollars might seem like it’s a lot, but it’s actually very insufficient.
“One academic paper notes that the organization’s entire 2018-2019 budget came to about $4.4 billion—just a fraction of the $33 billion annual health care and social services budget of Quebec.”
“We need to say “enough,” or the whatabouts will never end,” Khamsi concluded.
