By the numbers, Covid-19 was never 'like the flu'

'Public officials continue to draw comparisons between seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2 mortality, often in an attempt to minimise the effects of the unfolding pandemic,' wrote Dr Jeremy Faust, of Harvard Medical School, and Dr Carlos del Rio, of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. But those comparisons are 'apples and oranges', the physicians reported in an article published on 14 May in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. That's because the numbers comparing Covid-19 and flu just don't match up.