Coronavirus vs. swine flu

I saw the above image on Facebook:

1. First off, those numbers are wrong. (Maybe it was created like a month ago or something.) Currently the US has 2,174 cases and 47 deaths according to Johns Hopkins. And we're only getting started.

2. By contrast, the H1N1 Swine flu statistics are across a year, i.e., from approximately Spring 2009 to Spring 2010. So it'd be more fair to compare both after approximately one year has elapsed with the coronavirus.

3. The second or blue group is referring to the 2009-2010 Swine flu pandemic. It's true there were 60.8 millions cases. However, there were less deaths, i.e. 12,469 deaths, according to the CDC. (Maybe the 22,469 deaths was a typo. If so, that just goes to show that the creator was likely careless or sloppy.)

4. I agree the state of panic wasn't nearly as high in the 2009 Swine flu pandemic as it is today with the coronavirus pandemic. Yet that's why I've been attempting (in my own small way) to keep people calm. It could be that this coronavirus isn't as bad as we fear it will be.

5. However, even if it is, I don't see how panic or mass hysteria help. As I've repeatedly said, my concern is how we react to the coronavirus could prove worse than the coronavirus itself. I'm more concerned about churches shutting down, city-wide lockdowns, our civil liberties badly affected, economic recessions, and so on.

6. And speaking of the H1N1 Swine flu, which is a strain of influenza, I recently wrote the following:

I wouldn't necessarily say a coronavirus such as COVID-19 is more dangerous than influenza. Influenza is no joke. Many infectious disease experts have long argued that influenza is the most threatening virus to humanity. That it has the most potential to cause a pandemic.

And indeed it has. I mean influenza might seem routine to people, but the truth is influenza has caused many of the most severe epidemics and pandemics in human history. Influenza has caused severe epidemics and pandemics in 1743, 1889, 1918 (the Spanish flu), 1957 (the Asian flu), 1968 (the Hong Kong flu), 1977 (the Russian flu), and 2009 (the Swine flu).