How Much More Fatal Is COVID-19 Than The Flu In Michigan?

Remember when the pandemic started and everybody compared it to the flu?  And I mean everybody from the Federal Government right down to civilians like us.  The first reports started coming in with mere double digit positive tests and only single digit deaths.  Well that escalated quickly.

Even when the confirmed cases and deaths began to increase, many people remarked that the flu kills plenty of people in Michigan every year too so lets not panic and do something stupid.  Maybe the stupid thing was saying lets not do anything stupid.  I have to admit that I was stupid in terms of not having the information I needed to make an informed opinion.

Like many, I took that position early that maybe the Coronavirus won't be the mass killer it turned out to be.  Part of my thought process was I've never tried to process any thought about a pandemic situation I'd only seen in the movies.  Even now I can't completely wrap my head around it.

The truth is that the flu does kill many Michiganders and the facts are that, according to an article on mlive.com, the flu has killed only 2,179 people in Michigan since the year 2000.  More people in Michigan died from COVID-19 in one month.  And by the way, I don't mean to be insensitive when I say the ONLY 2,179 people died from the flu.  I was just making the point that I thought it was a lot more.

In fact, the difference is absolutely startling to me and it should be startling to more people who think this whole thing is a hoax.  It's certainly not and there's no arguing that.  What can be argued, however, is how we have handled it so far and what we are doing to handle it going forward.

I certainly learned a lesson with this information and own up to my mistake.  Perhaps more people will come to the realization that mistakes were made and own up too.