COVID vs. flu — is it a fair comparison?
COVID isn't 'just like the flu' and we shouldn't be comparing them, epidemiologist says
As COVID-19 restrictions end and New Brunwickers try to find the way back to "normal," the message from politicians and health authorities has often been this: We're going to have to learn to live with it.
After all, some say, we've learned to live with the flu.
But that comparison worries Colin Furness.
COVID-19 and flu are not the same, said Furness, an infection control epidemiologist from Ontario who has been watching New Brunswick's experience with the pandemic.
"There's an enormous danger to treating COVID like a respiratory virus and then holding it up against the flu," he said.
"I really do blame governments, and to some extent public health authorities for not being clear about the nature of the dangers posed by COVID," said Furness.
"And it's frustrating to me that your average Canadian sees COVID as a moderate-risk respiratory virus. That couldn't be further from the truth."
While COVID-19 has a respiratory phase, it is not a respiratory virus and it can cause serious long-term — even permanent — damage.
Scientists are still working to understand the lingering effects of the disease, including the loss of brain tissue and damage to vital organs.
"Flu is none of that," said Furness. "Flu is a respiratory virus. And if it doesn't kill you, it disappears completely."
COVID stats eclipse the flu
Influenza statistics don't come close to what New Brunswick is seeing with COVID. The most recent statistics available from the Department of Health are for Week 10, which was March 6 to 12.
In that week, there were no cases of influenza reported and not a single hospitalization due to the flu. The same goes for week 10 last year. In fact, there have only been 18 influenza cases reported so far this flu season.
In 2020, just before the pandemic was declared, Week 10 saw 228 new cases of the flu and 28 new hospitalizations. In 2019, Week 10 brought 102 new cases and 18 new hospitalizations.
As of March 12, there have been no deaths reported from the flu in the current flu season. The same goes for the same period in 2021. By this time in 2020, there were six deaths, and in 2019, there were 20.
By comparison, just last week, there were 13 COVID-related deaths in New Brunswick, while more than 7,000 new cases were reported, nearly 600 health-care workers were off sick, and nearly 150 people were hospitalized with COVID.
Despite the huge difference in numbers, Dr. Brenda Wilson, a public health physician and a professor of community health at Memorial University, understands why people make comparisons to the flu.
For many people who get COVID, it feels pretty much like the flu, she said. But for others, roughly 10 to 30 per cent of all cases, COVID "is going to turn into something else. And that's why it's not like the flu."
Wilson said what COVID does physiologically to the body "is well beyond what you would typically get with the flu." Plus, the long-term effects of COVID won't be known for years.
'Just like the flu'
Premier Blaine Higgs has frequently mentioned that his symptoms were like a flu or cold, while the province's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell has repeatedly said the province will continue to monitor COVID-19 the same way it monitors influenza.
Furness said monitoring COVID like the flu is a dangerous thing. First of all, he said health officials aren't really good at monitoring the flu.
"And if that's how we're treating COVID, we will have very little sense of what kind of population immunity we have for the next wave. We'll have very little sense of what variants might be developing. It's quite concerning to be as blind to COVID as we feel OK being blind to flu."
Scaling back testing and monitoring also has unintended consequences, Wilson said.
Doing so sends an implicit — if not explicit — message that everything is under control and the pandemic is over. Wilson said that's when people start to relax.
"And that encourages even more spread. So the whole decision to change testing may come from a good, rational analysis of how best to use your health care resources, but it does come with a lot of signals to the population."
Furness thinks testing and reporting of COVID should return to previous levels.
But to do that, said Furness, means governments would have to admit that they "made a gigantic mistake and created a lot of harm and suffering — and governments don't like saying that.
"It's staggering to me that we have paired a refusal to measure with a refusal to take the most basic protections. So we're pulling both back at the same time, which is essentially like pretending COVID isn't there. But it is and is going to cause a great deal of harm to some people, people who are particularly vulnerable."
That includes children under five, the elderly, and people who have significant health issues.
"For all of those people, life has gotten really terrifying because if we're not measuring it, we're not controlling it. And worse, we're responding by pretending that it's not there," said Furness.
When health officials aren't keeping a close watch over the disease, he said they won't know when added measures are needed.
"So that's the real problem of choosing to be blind — is that it completely paralyzes our ability to do even basic things to protect people."
The other casualty, said Furness, is vaccinations.
"What we find is when governments are providing a narrative that COVID is no big deal … people stop getting vaccinated. And that is a huge mistake. Vaccination remains one of the most important things we can do to keep the population safe, especially vulnerable people within the population."
Despite constant reminders by Russell and Health Minister Dorothy Shephard, vaccination rates in New Brunswick have plummeted.
Furness said it's happening across the country.
He said those who are concerned have already been vaccinated, and those dead-set against it, never will. In the middle, is a group that can still be convinced that getting vaccinated is the right thing to do.
Suggesting to people COVID is like the flu or a cold won't convince them to get the shot, said Furness. Instead, it'll probably lead them to believe the threat has passed.
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