OK, so here's a piece in the Daily Telegraph to cheer us all up. #covid19 is nowhere near as bad as we think....
(you know this is going to be a thread, don't you...)

Of course it is the convention for headlines always to be written in present tense (unless court reports, but that's another matter)
But in this case, it makes a nonsense of what the story is saying.
(2/?)

In one snapshot week up to March 20 before Covid got into its lethal stride, 170, 180 or 210 deaths were linked to the disease (depending on which figs you accept). The Tel reports that in the same week there were 1841 deaths "from flu and pneumonia".

So we've already moved from the headline "flu" to "flu and pneumonia".

I'm not sure where that 1841 figure comes from..because this is the ONS briefing up to that week

But even at 1,500. It's a lot more than died of covid *that week*.
But that figure is for deaths not from "flu", from "flu and pneumonia" but from respiratory disease.
That includes asthma, bronchitis, lung failure, breathing complications after surgery...

...tonsillitis, laryngitis, asbestosis, pneumoconiosis (tho we don't see a lot of that now coal industry defunct), lung fibrosis (after radiotherapy, ie people with lung cancer), abcesses, pulminory oedema, rhinitis (complications of common cold), pleurisy....

You get the picture. There are an awful lot of conditions other than flu covered by "respiratory disease"...

and we had 381 in one day from #covid19 this week. the total announced in the 7 days to the moment that headline was written was 1365.

Hardly a tenth of the flu toll

Whether this is wilful misinformation or ignorance, I wouldn't like to say. But that headline is every bit as wrong and irresponsible as all the "green shoots" and "we'll beat it in 12 weeks" propaganda being pumped out.
It's time for politicians and the press to talk straight

And because I'm an obsessive, here, from the WHO website, is the list of diseases (inc the common cold) that fall in that "respiratory disease" classification on the ONS deaths statistics handout. As you see, there are arrows to break the list down into further subsections.