I cannot see COVID-19 as anything but Influenza

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(Edited)

UPDATE! Skip to the good part: https://ecency.com/hive-150329/@darth-azrael/qvzx2q

COVID-19 x Influenza

Facts hereby presented have led me to believe coronavirus is, put simply, influenza, aka the flu. Once you're done reading my evidence, tell me what's your take on it, regardless of how mind-boggling it can sound to you.

We are comparing both diseases.

Same symptoms

The picture below is made of screenshots from the following websites: cdc.gov, allaboutvision.com and the Google result for "covid symptoms".

Loss of taste or smell happens in both cases. BBC says Covid causes more severe loss of smell than flu, because "Coronavirus patients with loss of taste really cannot tell the difference between bitter or sweet", but this is a lie. A quick google search for "influenza loss of smell" shows many results, new and old, talking about Long term serious olfactory loss in colds and/or flu.

"A rash on skin, or discoloration of fingers and toes" is easily translated to "looking sick with flu".

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Hard to see? Click on the image to navigate to it.

While there’s no cure for influenza virus, antiviral medications, plenty of fluids, and rest can help your body fight the infection.

Both are uncurable, treatments are the same

There’s no cure available for influenza. However, antiviral medications, plenty of fluids, and rest can help your body fight the infection. Vaccines help you prevent contracting influenza A or B. A lot of people ignore taking the vaccine, making them susceptible to catching the flu. Oseltamivir is one of the recommended treatment medications.

There's no cure available for coronaviruses. However, antiviral medications, plenty of fluids, and rest can help your body fight the infection. Oseltamivir has been tested with great success with Covid patients. Read everything about this trial: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00508-020-01780-0

Chloroquine works well against the Influenza virus in lab tubes, but it worsens infected people's conditions (source).

Chloroquine also works well against the Covid-19 virus in lab tubes (source), but clinical trials have been, at the very least, highly controversial.

An influenza pandemic would pan out the same way

The pandemic worst case is:

(a) Truly horrific
(b) Truly unlikely
(c) Truly worth planning for
(d) All of the above

The right answer: (d) All of the above.

That's a quote from the following article: cidrap.umn.edu



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Symptoms and treatments are in fact quite similar. A couple of key differences: covid-19 spreads more easily than the average flu and covid-19 seems to be more dangerous in terms of it being not only somewhat more likely to cause death but also more likely to cause long term complications. Covid-19 is a different virus than the one that causes the flu but if you want to compare them, covid 19 is probably worse than most strains of the flu (not sure about H1N1 though as that one seems to cause a lot of problems when it pops up too.)

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(Edited)

not sure about H1N1

You've written an entire paragraph about the flu, yet you write this. Uh, what? But the flu is H1N1. Also, you said "covid is more likely to cause long-term complications". Do you think long-term complications from the flu are rare when it goes untreated? They're not. Critical influenza symptoms, by the way, are as dangerous as covid's.

Influenza (Flu) Viruses

There are two main types of influenza (flu) virus: Types A and B.

source

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(Edited)

I realize H1N1 is a strain of the flu. It is the strain that was responsible for the Spanish Flu of 1918. What I was saying is that 1) Covid-19 is not the flu because it is not a strain of influenza and 2) Covid 19 is worse than most strains of the flu (though perhaps not more severe strains like H1N1, though it does seem to spread more easily) in terms of both long term complications and number of deaths caused.

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(Edited)
  1. Covid 19 is worse than most strains of the flu, though perhaps not more severe strains like H1N1

Even if "not being worse than most Influenza strains" holds true, that affirmation pales in comparison to what's most relevant: the most common flu in the world is H1N1 (Influenza A). The second most common flu in the world is Influenza B. So what makes you think they don't spread as easily?

  1. Covid-19 is not the flu because it is not a strain of influenza

What makes you think so, aside from what other people/media say?

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There are many different strains of Influenza A. H1N1 is one particular strain that can be more severe than most. But even within H1N1 there are further subclasses. Just because you are infected with Influenza A does not mean you are infected with a strain of H1N1:

Influenza A viruses are divided into subtypes based on two proteins on the surface of the virus: hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). There are 18 different hemagglutinin subtypes and 11 different neuraminidase subtypes (H1 through H18 and N1 through N11, respectively). While there are potentially 198 different influenza A subtype combinations, only 131 subtypes have been detected in nature. Current subtypes of influenza A viruses that routinely circulate in people include: A(H1N1) and A(H3N2). Influenza A subtypes can be further broken down into different genetic “clades” and “sub-clades.” See the “Influenza Viruses” graphic below for a visual depiction of these classifications.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/types.htm

Influenza is not a coronavirus. They are different types of viruses. COVID-19 bears more similarities to the common cold than the flu in terms of structure. It is similar to other coronaviruses like MERS and SARS (which are also not the flu).

Both influenza and coronaviruses have a single strand of RNA as their genome, but that is where the genomic similarity ends. The influenza virus genome comprises 7 or 8 segments, while the coronavirus has one long strand. Influenza virus RNA is what is known as ‘negative sense RNA’. This means that its sequence is the mirror image of the correct code for proteins and a complementary strand must be made from it before production of new viruses within a host cell can proceed. In contrast, the coronavirus genome is ‘positive sense’ which means it can act as messenger RNA and code for proteins. So from a virological point of view, coronavirus is definitely not a type of flu.
https://www.labnews.co.uk/article/2030503/coronavirus-is-it-just-a-type-of-flu

There are many thousands of types of coronaviruses of which the flu is not one. Some are worse than others. There are several that cause the "common cold".

I believe COVID-19 spreads more easily than the flu because that has what has been observed. There are a variety of possible reasons for that. One possible reason is that the COVID-19 virus is smaller than the flu and would tend to linger in the air longer and you get more of them in a droplet making infection more likely if exposed. Also, the incubation period for COVID-19 is longer than the flu which gives you more opportunity to spread it before you realize you are sick.

I'm not arguing that the government didn't overreact. They did. But that doesn't mean COVID-19 isn't dangerous or is "just the flu".

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But that doesn't mean COVID-19 isn't dangerous or is "just the flu".

I want to start with this. Not for a single moment have I said COVID-19 isn't dangerous. On the contrary, I've clearly pointed out, in the last section of my post, that the flu is a lot more dangerous than most people think. Maybe that's why you and me aren't on the same page: you think I'm "downscaling covid to the flu", but what I'm really doing is "upscaling the flu to covid". Please check out that section of my post again. Making covid look weak was never the intention - and my article certainly doesn't say anything like that.

https://www.labnews.co.uk/article/2030503/coronavirus-is-it-just-a-type-of-flu

This? This is great. I have not been able to have a conversation as thorough as ours about covid-19 until you started replying to my post. So far, it's been a blessing. After doing your own due diligence, you are pointing out things to me that hasn't occurred to me yet. In case it wasn't obvious, this conversation has been very pleasing to me.

So, you've cleared up some misconceptions I've had. I still have a problem with what's called covid. Government are overreacting? Yeah, but I think there's more. In my country, we've recently gotten told that, basically, the common cold is covid. If anyone coughs, they probably have covid! At this point, it's like everything is covid. So how can we know if something is covid at all?

Furthermore, when there is an existing medicine that anyone can use, effective while treating covid, why isn't the word out about it? The problem with today's news is we have to doubt everything, because they never lie. They always tell us half-truths, so we, people without access to expensive lab tech, have to create entire debates around each detail just so we know how much of one news article is true and how much isn't.

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(Edited)

Well, to be fair, what we call the common cold is in fact caused by a few different types of coronaviruses...but not COVID-19 and of course it is nowhere near as dangerous. It's silly to assume every cough is covid but on the other hand it makes sense to take precautions to prevent spreading it to others in case it is. At least for as long as COVID is still common in the wild anyway.

Whether you say covid is as weak as the flu or the flu is as strong as covid, it is generally not correct. Certainly, there are SOME flu strains throughout history that have been as bad as or even worse than COVID. The last time that really happened was 100 years ago though. In recent history it has been viruses more closely related to COVID-19...other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS...that have caused bigger problems. The reason those were not bigger worldwide catastrophes is because they didn't really spread that easily.

The main point here being that while yes, the flu is certainly dangerous, COVID is MORE dangerous. Or at least that's what the best evidence available suggests. The flu can kill in the neighborhood of 400,000 people a year. But COVID-19 kills more or has killed more, even allowing for the absurdly inflated numbers in some placesand even if you assume there really were just as many flu deaths this year as last year but they have been attributed to covid. I'm not basing all this on just what the media says but also on what the science says and the anecdotal evidence I have from a few different acquaintances I have that work in hospitals. While hospitals in the U.S. were never overwhelmed like some feared, they were operating closer to capacity than normal, ventilators were in short supply, and hospital workers were working a lot more hours during the height of of COVID-19. I personally know of one hospital worker that contracted COVID-19 on two separate occasions, each time he said it was as sick as he had ever been in his life and each time it took weeks to fully recover.

However, using some common sense is the best way to limit the spread, not draconian government restrictions. If you are known to be at high risk, take extra precautions. Don't go out if you are sick. Wash your hands. Wear a mask if you want but be aware this is only moderately helpful and only in certain situations. Wearing a mask is pointless if you are social distancing. Even limited attendance at large events makes sense. But essentially shutting down everything? Makes no sense and never did.

The biggest problem is that it has become almost impossible to have an honest conversation about COVID. These days, anything that can be politicized is and that includes COVID. Once it becomes political, it seems you only have people arguing one extreme or the other. Either COVID-19 is going to kill us all if we don't lock ourselves up forever or COVID-19 is just the flu. Neither is really true. The truth of the matter is that there was a LOT of uncertainty in the early days of the outbreak. Not enough was known. Maybe it made sense to overreact a little...at first. But again, after that it became political and decisions were made for political reasons not for scientific reasons or with the benefit of the average person in mind. As far as the media goes, they are motivated both politically and by ratings. Fear makes for good ratings apparently.

As far as treating COVID, at first we didn't know what treatments would work. There there were a lot of unsubstantiated claims about how this or that treatment would work but until you have evidence, it's all conjecture. There are some treatments but they don't work consistently or for everyone. The vaccines available seem to work pretty well though I'm still a little nervous about mRNA vaccines as they are relatively new. They have been tested on a small scale for years but the COVID vaccines are the first real large scale usage of that technology. I'm not too worried about it though because despite what anti-vaxers say, in my personal experience through myself, my family and other people I know, a vaccine has never caused the slightest problem that I can identify. I'm not saying they can't, just that such problems are very rare. More rare than death by COVID.

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(Edited)

Thank you for your overwhelmingly positive input. It was very enlightening.

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Every strain of flu is Influenza. H1N1 is Influenza type A.

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O Brasil (em todos os setores/fatores) conseguiu complicar ainda mais nossa situação... triste realidade!!

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É intencional, e são ordens estrangeiras.

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