January 12, 2021 saw the highest single-day death toll for Covid-19- 4320. The last 80 days has been a period of a steadily declining death toll. According to Worldometer (and other top world statistics sites) our daily Covid-19 death toll is now under one thousand deaths per day. At what point is this considered a similar daily toll to that of the flu?
Viral interference has basically brought flu deaths to zero. Covid 19 is cutting into the seasonal flu’s ‘market share’ and a season that can yield up to 68,000 deaths is practically non-existent. So at what point does Covid-19 become a flu-like problem? The CDC estimates that anywhere from 24,000-62,000 Americans died of the flu during the 2019-2020 flu season through April 4, 2020. Nearly all of these deaths occurred between December and March, with January being peak. There are 121 days during those four months. This would mean the high estimate of influenza deaths would average out to 512 deaths per day over this time frame.
As of April 16th 2021, the seven day Covid-19 death average has dropped to only 727 deaths per day. This includes two days where the reported deaths number was well below 500. This means we are experiencing less daily Covid-19 deaths than we would have flu deaths on an average peak-season day. The point of this article is to ask when the masks should come off? Tens of millions of Americans have gotten shots to help this country return to normal. They are now being told they still need to where masks after these shots (and distance). More regions need to follow the no rules policies of states like Florida. They have been completely reopen for nearly a year and yet still see similar case and death totals similar to states like California that have had the most lock downs.
