This virus is not just like the Flu.

The CDC has a model for coronavirus disease burden through December of 83 million infections and 4.1 million hospitalizations.

If you extrapolate from the model's estimates, we are now more like 120 million infected today. Or about 36% of the country has been infected.

It is hard to get cumulative hospitalization data, but I think the extrapolated hospitalizations number would be about 5.1 million by now.

For deaths, we have reached more than 560,000 excess deaths if you extrapolate to the present.

To put this in perspective, last year's estimated Flu burden was 38 million infections, 400,000 hospitalizations, and 22,000 deaths. Last year was considered a moderate Flu season, with about average infections and hospitalizations, but below average deaths.

In other words, Coronavirus has caused more than 3x as many infections as last year's Flu, over 12x as many hospitalizations, and over 25x as many deaths. All of course with mitigation in place that has all but eliminated 2020-2021's Flu season.

And to stress it very strongly, coronavirus hospitalizations are not only incomparable quantitatively to flu hospitalizations, but even more so qualitatively.

Covid hospitalizations are longer on average than Flu hospitalizations. Covid ICU utilization is higher than Flu ICU utilization. And Covid ICU patients require higher nurse to patient ratios than Flu ICU patients. Worth bringing up, but even on the generalized comparison of raw numbers this virus is remarkably awful.

This virus is not just like the Flu.