Was thinking about that idiot co-worker last month that said, “it’s the flu”. One of the things I said in my incendiary response was, “I have never known anyone that died from the flu”. Note that I cannot give exact numbers on COVID. We stopped counting in late December when my unvaxxed F-I-L nearly died from it. The small community he lives in is still reeling from, and simultaneously ignoring, the slaughter.
FLU: zero (my great-great grandmother and one of her children did die from one of the early waves of the “Spanish” influenza outbreak.)
COVID: stopped counting at 40. But at least 20 more died since January. Those later deaths were all from a rural MAGAt-hole in PA.
The numbers I include here are people that myself or my spouse knew personally. We weirdly even had some cross-overs between work associate deaths. Didn’t even know we had worked with/adjacent to the same people until I mentioned a death and it turned out he’d worked with her previously. And only a teeny amount of these folks died prior to vaccine availability. So when I see that the vaccine could have prevented 250,000 deaths, I think that’s a lowball #.
I know two people personally who passed away from covid. One was my uncle, early 70s. Then my friend's mother, who was infected by him working at tesla factory. He is sorely regretful fur not vaxxing.
I know of 3 other individuals not directly, either through friends or family. I know of no one who has died from the flu. Maybe two people in my past died from pneumonia.
I’m 62. 0* flu
3-COVID +1 “Likely” COVID all extended family
1 in 30’s AV fit, trim, and healthy died less than 10 days after onset of symptoms
1 in 70’s AV cured Hep-C infection slow torturous death in ICU
1 in early 60’s pre vax smoker, heavy alcohol and drug use in recovery 10+ years
1 in 80’’s “likely” COVID vaxxed and boosted lung cancer survivor
*While researching on ancestry.com, I recall seeing a death certificate for an ancestor, cause of death listed as influenza. .
I don't know of anyone who has died of the flu. I personally know of 6 people however who died of Covid. Prior to vaccines 3 deaths : my best friend, the principal at my sister's school (she was a friend as well), and the neighbor across the street. All of these people were old-ish (like me) but aside from age the only one who was also in poor health was the neighbor (and he was in really poor health). After the vaccine was available 3 more deaths: a high school friend (vaccinated), my s-i-l's sibling (conspiracy theorist and serious anti-vaxxer - the dead sibling, not my s-i-l who is a sane, educated and vaxxed to the max) and another woman (of the acquaintance level, again, conspiracy theorist and serious anti-vaxxer). My friend from high school was vaccinated not sure if she was boosted but I would be surprised if she wasn't - she was already on oxygen from COPD - and how about this for irony - she was infected by the doctor who was her husband's cancer surgeon. Her husband died about a month after her but I don't think it was Covid. I think he just gave up. The other two women who died were healthy but old-ish one in her 60's and the other in her 70's. You know when you get to be in your 70's you start getting used to people dying - but it's always cancer or heart attacks or strokes. Or just plain old age - during the pandemic I lost two of my aunts. Since they were in their late 90's (and both vaxxed, boosted and isolating at home with all their books and music, it was more a matter of taking a nap and not waking up, instead of gasping for breath or strangling on your own mucous. So I'm calling that a win.
2 in my family before the Covid vaccines were available. No one of the flu. My dad lived to almost 91, got a flu shot every year. No vaccine for Alzheimer's 😥
That's a heavy load of loss for you. I'm so sorry.
No one I know died from influenza or Covid or was hospitalized from either - and I'm up there in age. I live in very blue Minneapolis, where mask and shut-down compliance was high, as is the vaccination rate.
A nephew lives in a MAGAt suburb- his neighbors dropped like flies from April 2020 through Delta in winter 2021. Our next door neighbor is a paramedic in a different MAGAt area. He considers Covid19 a Darwinian thinning of the GOP herd.
0 flu
1 family member from covid
I’ve known 1 person to die of the flu. He was young, about 35, diabetic, and had refused the flu vaccine despite his doctors advice to take it. He was evacuated to a different city and soon died of the infection. For COVID I’ve known 4 people who died…one pre vaccine, 2 others had comorbidities and age, had been vaccinated with 2 shots before the booster dose was available. The other person who died was a healthy man with no comorbidities who had 2 shots but was not eligible for the booster when he contracted the infection. He died in january ‘22 at age 63; it will be several years before scientists can unravel the reasons behind some people getting severe disease, while others have minor symptoms. His Mother is devastated, and I think of her whenever I get boosters or wear a mask...to help myself and everyone else. So final tally: flu observed over 50 yrs=1, COVID over 2 yrs=4
My mother was extremely ill with the London flu. I've been hospitalised twice with pneumonia (and had it a third time without the hospital part).
I directly know three people who died of Covid-19, a man and woman in my town with three small children, who died before a vaccine was available, and a Korea War veteran in my town who died before the vaccine.
I don’t know anyone ever that has died from flu. I don’t know anyone personally that has died from Covid, but I’ve heard of mothers and aunts of friends who have died. They’ve all been between 80-99. Our favourite AFN was just yammering on in a video on FB that she was recently in the ER with breathing difficulties because of the ‘flu’ she got after attending a Defeat the Mandates rally. She got one of her cronies to ‘advocate’ for her. She was worried about going there because the hospital has tried to kill her twice, because she‘s so high profile and important…
Surprisingly few for me. No family members or actual friends. A couple of acquaintances have died, but while I knew them, I wasn't particularly close to them. It's surprising that I don't know more because I used to frequent a neighborhood bar for happy hour and that core group of regulars (mostly red hats of course) refused to change their habits when the pandemic started, and they all passed the rona around like it was a collection plate. These folks are 50's to 70's in age, most heavy drinkers, many smokers...and none of them died while infected!
I don’t know anyone who was even hospitalized with the flu, I don’t know anyone who took 2 weeks to get over the flu, and I don’t know any “long flu” sufferers.
Influenza often leads to pneumonia, as it did in my case years ago.
It's not the flu they should be comparing Covid to-it's pneumonia, which does kill a bunch of people every year:
Top 20 Pneumonia Facts—2019
Covid 19 is characterized by pneumonia, particularly in the Delta version.
I knew one man who's died from Covid, I could swear on a stack of Bibles that my husband might have had it, but the time line just barely misses it, I know a few people who've had it, and survived.
I did have the flu back in 1968, during the 1968 Flu pandemic and I was just so sick I didn't even get back to school for about a week.
It was a very bad one. I did not die (obviously) but that's only because I was far younger.
1 to 4 million people worldwide died that year from it.
I personaly don't know anybody who died of flu. I know 2 people who died of covid close to me . In hospice where I work 4 others died of covid .My coworker stepfather died of covid and another coworker niece did.
Around 1975 I knew a male nurse in Ithaca, NY who worked in a nursing home. I think most of the patients were elderly. There was an influenza epidemic. In an unguarded moment he said his patients were "dying like flies." (He was exhausted and miserable.)
I gather the first influenza vaccines were made much earlier, in the 1940s. But as I remember, people seldom got them until the 1980s. I did not even know they were available. I think the ones they have nowadays are better. They target 4 different variants.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/quadrivalent.htm
The number of infections and deaths varies considerably from one year to another:
"CDC estimates that flu has resulted in 9 million – 41 million illnesses, 140,000 – 710,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 – 52,000 deaths annually between 2010 and 2020."
I know 3 people who have died, unvaxed from covid. No one from flu One, a 26 year old mom of two. I know numerous unvaccinated people who have been hospitalized. One young 30 something who was on ECMO. Knows NO ONE who is vaxxed, that have been hospitalized. My 35 year old niece, had covid last week, she said felt like flu on steroids. Her temp was between 101-103 for a couple days and she felt like a Mac truck repeatedly had run over her. After day 4 all symptoms gone
Technically, I would say 1 and 1. The flu death was a former coworker who was only about 40 and it was shocking. Covid was unvaccinated aunt.
If you extend out 1 degree, my brother lost a friend to the flu who was also in his 40’s. Covid deaths at 1 degree of separation are only another 4 or 5? Unless you count the 30 nursing home patients lost at my nurse friend’s facility.
Covid deaths are currently the #1 cause of death where I am, in Arizona.
My father died from influenza, but he was old and sick with many other problems. People often used to die from the flu. I have a feeling the widespread use of the flu vaccine began in the 1980s, so the disease is less common these days. But not unheard of. Before Obamacare, one of my wife's students died from it in her late 20s. She got sick, couldn't afford to go to the doctor, and by the time she went to the hospital it was too late. She died that night. Her mother was a widow and was left with no one.
In the 1980s, I was hospitalized with pneumonia caused by influenza. That's not something you want to do twice. That why I got a COVID vaccine, and flu vaccines every year. I sometimes think these antivaxxers have never been seriously ill in their lives. Or they never saw someone die. They seem somehow coddled, or removed from the realities of life, health, and death.
Flu: 1; Covid: 4- The flu was really bad about 10 years ago and killed someone I went to high school with. The four Covid deaths were a relative, a co-worker, a friend's husband, and a person I went to high school with. Only one died prior to the vaccines.
I’m not aware of anyone I know dying from the flu but did lose a family member (had 2 shots but was just before boosters came available) to covid. Two online acquaintances died of covid as well.