Paul Kengor: This isn't the flu! On covid-19's virulence & politics

Covid-19 is the real deal — a virulent killer.

Unfortunately, that’s not the view of many of my conservative friends, including those protesting in Harrisburg and with megaphones on talk radio and Fox News. I’m not going to call them out by name. It’s not necessary. Everyone is hearing such voices. Particularly vocal are Trump supporters concerned about how statewide lockdowns are hurting the economy and the president’s reelection prospects.

To quote one such conservative (a longtime friend I admire and respect) from a recent Fox News appearance: “This was not and is not a pandemic, but we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this and it’s really unfortunate to look at the facts. … We’re going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.”

No. This is a pandemic, and it’s far worse than the flu.

It’s crucial to know some basic numbers: The fatality rate for seasonal flu is 0.1%. By comparison, the fatality rates for covid-19 are far worse than even pessimists like me initially imagined. The U.S. fatality rate is well over 5% and growing.

Yes, I hear the objections: Some studies suggest far more people might be positive for covid-19 and have little to no severe symptoms. And yes, perhaps a certain portion of deaths attributed to covid-19 shouldn’t have been. Fine, remove them from the estimates. You still end up with a fatality rate that’s utterly frightening. If the kill rate were even 3%, that’s 30 times worse than the flu.

As I write, we’re blowing past 50,000 deaths from covid-19 in about a month, and from about 870,000 confirmed cases. To get 50,000 deaths from seasonal flu, you need 50 million cases. What you don’t want are 50 million covid-19 cases. That would be biomedical Armageddon for our health care system.

And look at Europe. Seven countries in Western Europe, considered the world’s most technologically advanced region, have fatality rates above 10%, with four over 13%. That’s ghastly, shocking.

Part of the reason for the large number of deaths in places like Italy and New York is that a virus this contagious and lethal so overwhelms hospitals that not everyone who needs vital emergency care can get it quickly enough. That’s how you lose healthy middle-aged people in addition to elderly with preexisting conditions. Incidentally, it’s also how you get more deaths from people with cancer, heart attacks and other conditions that get neglected because the entire hospital becomes one giant covid-19 trauma ward.

In short, if this malicious virus wasn’t contained, we’d see an enormous number of deaths.

As for those who believe that fears (and data) have been exaggerated, that the economy is suffering unnecessarily, and worry that this will hurt Donald Trump’s reelection prospects, I advise this: The surest recipe for killing Trump’s reelection would be a premature return to business-as-usual that prompts a second deadly wave and further economic collapse. Trump supporters should want a few more weeks of sacrifice that would hopefully contain the virus and open the floodgates for an economic resurgence (and even boom) in the third quarter. Trump could then campaign on having vanquished covid-19 and persevered with a resurrected economy.

I implore people to be patient just a little longer. Covid-19 is downright deadly, and far worse than the typical seasonal flu.