By “less” he meant “more”
Trump issued a “the flu is worse, COVID is nothing” tweet and Facebook post this morning. For once Twitter and Facebook stomped on it.
Twitter not only flagged it, it veiled it. It doesn’t always take that second step.
Tip Jar
If twitter really cared about misleading tweets, there would have been no tweets from the “dump” for the past 4 years. Too little too late.Flagging anything he says now only means that they understood the malicious intent behind all the other tweets of his and they were perfectly fine with them.
So he’s just overlooking the fact that COVID has killed twice as many Americans this year than his ‘sometimes over 1000’ flu victims, and given that the virus has been active all year, then unlike flu there is no COVID ‘season’.
Twice as many? Over 200 times as many and it’s only October.
Sorry, that should have been 100,000 as per his tweet.
Several sources have fact checked his claim; flu deaths don’t usually come close to 100,000. During pandemics, we see that many, but otherwise, they are much lower (though in the 2017-2018 season there were 61,000 – that’s the closest in a long, long time).
iknklast, it’s also important to note that even the genuine figures for flu deaths are probably higher than they would be were it not for two factors in play. The first is the anti-vax movement and the second, and likely most important, is that many people simply cannot afford a flu shot. I wonder how much of an effect eliminating those factors would have on the number of deaths from flu?
AoS, I hate the anti-vax movement. They have a lot to answer for. And it is my opinion that the flu shot should be free. The government should provide it for everyone, which would make sense. That isn’t going to happen, of course, though there are some places where people can get the flu shot for free…if they have access to those places. I know WalGreens will do that, but they usually say “with insurance”, so it isn’t like they’re giving anything. They’re claiming the insurance, and writing off the co-pay. So people without insurance are still out of luck.
Confirming what iknklast said about Walgreens, I thought I was getting a free shot last year but I had to pay for it. In retrospect I probably could have gone to my regular doctor and paid about the same even without insurance.
Just out of interest, what is the average price of a flu shot in the US? Over here, it is free for many including OAPs, those receiving unemployment or disability benefits, the low-waged, and under-18s in full-time education, among others, and for everybody else, it costs £10.08, which is $13.00 US.
If memory serves I think it was ~$65 for my shot, which was a lot more than I could readily afford at the time but I needed the shot to be able to work a temp job. Don’t get me started on how expensive everything is when you’re poor or unemployed or usually both.
Eeesh, that’s a lot – I was thinking it ranged from about $10 to $30.
Via Google I see this –
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Presumably that meant “free and low COST clinics.”
Flu vaccination prices vary in NZ. The actual vaccine dose apparently costs NZ$9. For many people (pregnant women, those aged over 65, those under 65 with certain medical conditions, those aged under 5 with certain medical conditions) the vaccine is free.
For everyone else there is a subsidy payable (around ~NZ$20) if you go to your local health clinic or pharmacy for the shot. Typically the you’ll be charged another NZ$18-25. If you get it through a non-subsidised commercial provider the charge is usually on the order of NZ$30-40.
So, in US$ free to $26 or in UKP free to 20.