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Originally Posted by 9M71
Serious question - did H1N1 cause the strain on the hospital system that COVID did?
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No, but that doesn't mean people didn't die with H1N1 as a contributing factor just like Covid. (they assuredly did because 70M people in the US had it, far more than Covid). Furthermore, I'd argue if a media frenzy began on H1N1 and scared people, more people would have been tested, hospitalized with flu like symptoms, and generally more hysteria would have surrounded it.
With Covid, the positive test rate is still quite low (indicating that it is on peoples' mind and there is much more fear without reason, bc they are largely negative when tested). The general public definitely do not understand what is behind the "covid death" count because all they see are # of cases and # of deaths. Misleading. Reckless. I guarantee most people would be surprised to know 60% of all deaths are people over 75 and even more surprised 94% of all deaths involve 2.6 other conditions. Just that should be disclosed, daily, along with the tally. You need context.
H1N1 didn't get the media frenzy behind it, so the deaths were likely reported in a more generalized, less aggressive way. Today, there are many accounts of Covid being a cause of death for already severely sick (and old) patients (see the cdc.gov data). There are even financial incentives for reporting covid deaths to get federal funding. It's also turned extremely political, sadly.
All I can tell you is the media handled it entirely differently. Part of it was luck that it wasn't as "deadly" but part of it was just it didn't catch on as much in the media. I truly believe the media made things a lot worse and public opinion started demanding testing, the mask revolution, data, etc. It got a life of its own.
H1N1 was actually scarier in some ways because it killed healthy, young people. Covid19 is essentially a contributing factor to people already close to death, either by age or by all their conditions and age. Fact.