All over the country, over the course of a few months, there were about 21,000,000 symptomatic cases, 290,000 hospitalizations, and 37,000 deaths. More than 25,000 of the deaths were in the 65+ age group.
It seems likely that this type of case and death count recitation is familiar to the reader, seen through the lens of Covid-19, where we have assiduously documented cases and deaths for the greater part of two years. But these numbers were not Covid-19 numbers. They were cases, and deaths, from flu, during the 2010-2011 influenza season, one of the worst seasons in the past decade. We wonder: how many of us were aware of the daily case and death count during that flu season more than a decade ago? And, perhaps more importantly, would we have behaved differently as a society if we had beenkeeping track of cases and deaths the way we have been during Covid-19?
In some ways Covid-19 case and death counting, 18 months into the pandemic, has taken on an uncomfortably familiar role, with tallies being reported in all media in much the same way as, say, the weather, which is also reported daily. But what impact does this abundance of reporting have on how we think about the pandemic?
Read the full post at The Turning Point.