Steve Engard’s letter (“Flu deserves more attention,” Our Readers’ Views, March 2) questioned why there’s more emphasis on COVID-19 compared to the flu. Mr. Engard’s letter illustrates not only the rampant innumeracy in America but also how out of touch and out of date some Americans are.
It’s not apparent to me what day Mr. Engard’s letter was sent; I’d have to look up the WHO time series data to get the exact day, but whatever the day was, by now there’s a lot more infected and dead. Even without the massive testing that the U.S. should have been doing from day one (and that South Korea did) it is evident that the number of cases and deaths is increasing exponentially in the U.S. That means the rate of increase of new cases is also increasing exponentially. This simply is not the case with the influenza virus, even though the current strains are related to that of the 1918-19 pandemic.
Finally, let’s talk logistics: Anyone who’s flown planes before the pandemic broke out knows how crowded they are, because flights are scheduled and planes are designed to have “just enough” seats and no more. It’s a similar situation with hospital beds. The U.S. simply does not have enough spare hospital beds.
