COVID-19 is NOT the flu, and here’s why.

1. The whole world is susceptible to this new virus.

Why? No one has built up immunity to it - because it's new! And experts say it's plausible that 20-70% of adults could be infected with CoViD-19 if we don't take swift action to curb the epidemic. 

2. We don’t currently have a vaccine or any treatments for COVID-19.

And it will most likely take between 12-18 months to develop a new vaccine, according to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director, Anthony Fauci, MD. 

3. This new virus seems more "contagious".

The measure that epidemiologists use to describe how quickly a virus spreads is called R0, which is pronounced R-nought. This is a basic reproduction number: it’s the average number of people one sick person infects.. 

• For seasonal flu, this is about 1.3.

• For the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), this is about 2.3 based on early data from the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship outbreak.

R0 can change over the course of an epidemic based on both human and virus behavior, and we have already seen it happen with COVID-19. 

 4. COVID-19 is more severe than the flu. 

Let’s look at hospitalizations and mortality rate as two measures of severity. Current evidence indicates that about 15-20% of patients with a confirmed case of COVID-19 are hospitalized compared with about 1% of cases for flu.

In addition, the observed mortality rate for confirmed cases of COVID-19 is approximately 2.3% compared with 0.1% for seasonal flu, calculated from CDC data.