To the editor;

With all the talk about COVID, have you ever wondered if anyone gets the flu anymore?

Looking at the facts can be eye-opening when comparing COVID vs. flu. In six months between Oct. 1, 2019, and April 4, 2020, there were about 50 million cases of the flu with 500,000 hospitalizations, 50,000 deaths, and 10% of people hospitalized.

Let’s compare this with COVID now that we’re 11 months into 2020: We have had a mere 100,000 hospitalizations and this is with the heavy political pressure to call virtually every illness or death COVID. That’s only 20% as many hospitalizations as from the flu, yet in half the time, so it’s closer to 10%.

What’s more, this year’s flu season numbers were lower than usual for every region in the United States. I wonder why. Could it possibly be because many flu cases were diagnosed as COVID due to the extreme rewards offered to hospitals for subsidies for each COVID case?

Get this. There is no statistical difference in the number of children hospitalized for flu vs. COVID-19 and it only kills one in 1,000 children, if that.

So, why all the fuss about a virus that is essentially a new version of a common cold?

Had no one made a big deal about COVID-19 and it just made its way through the population, people likely would have viewed it as another version of a cold or flu, people developing herd immunity, and our economy would still be intact.

Let’s drop the fear of dying of COVID and get on with life — but keep washing your hands. That’s always a good habit.

Jerry McGlothlin

Hickory