> It is weird how you are insistent on focusing in on how comorbidities impact COVID patients but ignore the same comorbidity issues for flu patients.

That's fair, although age matters way, way more, so we can elide the bit for future re-readings.

> Also the 0.3% number you are referencing is being questioned as other serology studies have shown it to be 2x-3x higher. The reality of the situation is that we don't know the exact fatality rate of COVID-19. What we do know is that it is at least a few times more deadly than the flu and potentially an order of magnitude more deadly.

I'm not just referencing the Gangelt data, but also the Vo data, and the Santa Clara data (which is very much in question now). That was also approximately the IFR for the Diamond Princess (0.85%) but of course Diamond Princess skewed much older so likely that IFR represents an upper bound. There are precious few population studies for us to reference, but they're far more valuable for making public health decisions than the ratio of people who go into a hospital as compared to come out. That only defines the numerator, without defining the denominator.

I'm also basing it on the estimates during the pandemic that H1N1 had a CFR of 0.1-5.1% from country to country, and landed on an IFR of 0.02%, or one-fifth the lowest estimate. [1]

> What we do know is that it is at least a few times more deadly than the flu and potentially an order of magnitude more deadly.

Not for all demographics. It's demonstrably less fatal for children, which the flu does not spare, and approximately the same for folks under 49.

> Like previously mentioned, we have already passed the worst flu numbers even while most of us are under a stay at home order. It seems like no matter how you look at the data, the only way in which COVID-19 is not worse than the flu is how it impact the very young. COVID is more deadly in basically every other way.

There's reasons you shouldn't compare COVID's current numbers to an average flu season. One being that COVID's new so none of us have immunity. It's also more virulent. It's affecting a similar size population but just all at once instead of spread out, so it's impact is concentrated in time. That makes it not particularly meaningful to project out. Not to mention that flu number is after a vaccine and after a lifetime of exposures, so likely doesn't represent an apples to apples comparison. If the flu vaccine is 10-60% effective, you should probably multiply the number of expected flu cases by up to 2 - or more. Think of it more like the first time someone caught the flu.

Further, the flu changes regularly, and comes back at us repeatedly, and COVID may well not -- early indications are promising in that regard.

I'm not trying to downplay anything, I'm trying to synthesize the data we do know and not fall into the panic that is dominating the discourse. We shouldn't make big decisions while scared senseless, we should allow the data to dictate as much as possible.

Saying this disease is a "death sentence" for an asthmatic 20 year old is panic. It's just not that. 17% of hospitalizations involved asthmatics in the month of March [2] while 8% of the US population has asthma. So I guess your risk is doubled. From 0.3% to 0.6% without adjusting for age. That is not a death sentence.

[1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm#T1_down