Great article on the massive difference between Covid-19 counts and the flu.

More from the article:

Using an apples-to-apples comparison, we can say that the coronavirus and the disease it causes, covid-19, have already killed eight times as many people as the flu. By the time we get data for the entire season, the difference appears likely to be at least tenfold, or a full order of magnitude.

The coronavirus, Faust writes, “is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.”

One of the most challenging things about this pandemic is making sense of the profound uncertainty surrounding the many quantities that might appear, at first glance, to be rock solid. On the surface, comparing flu and coronavirus deaths seems like a simple proposition: dig up the official numbers of both and see which is greater.

But that effort gets complicated as soon as you realize that flu mortality is not reported as a tally but as an estimated range, which is far different from the individual counts, based on testing and diagnoses, used for covid-19. And because we can’t test and diagnose everyone, those covid-19 deaths are probably undercounted as well. Soon, what once appeared to be a simple mathematical exercise turns into a mess of algorithms, estimates and uncertainty.

People encountering that uncertainty for the first time, as many of us are during this pandemic, are likely to react in one of two ways. Some cherry-pick a single number that comports with their biases, creating an artificial certainty to score political points or avoid upsetting their preconceptions. That’s what the politicians and talking heads using faulty flu data to downplay the outbreak are doing. Others throw their hands up and declare the truth to be unknowable, indulging in the cynicism that believes you can “make statistics say whatever you want.”

But rather than try to make sense of this uncertainty ourselves, there’s a third option: turning to the experts who’ve devoted their entire careers to these questions. We can listen to the epidemiologists and physicians, people like Faust and his colleagues, who are trained to draw the best possible conclusions out of uncertain data, understanding that those conclusions may have to be updated as new information comes in.

And while the experts might not all agree on some points, something like a critical consensus emerges if we listen to enough of them. Then, that consensus can be used to inform policy that helps save lives and protect the economy.

(Breaking this up a bit to make it easier to deal with . . . for those who can’t get to the article online)

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