I get why the phrase, “It’s just the flu,” became popular in early-middle 2020. Governments everywhere were making the wrong move while almost nobody outside the elderly and the severely health compromised were getting more than mildly ill with COVID. There are people who believe that COVID is purely a rebranding of the flu, but that is not what the data tells us. Turning, “It’s just the flu,” into a mantra is no better than mantras about masking and social distancing, and it encourages those made into dissidents to begin ossifying the artificial divide that needs to be healed.
Understand that there are still mysteries in my mind surrounding COVID, but I want to push away questions that I don’t know how to answer to focus on plain facts and logic that can sort out what may be a mistake, and may be a Mindwar tactic.
A Difference of Symptoms
It is an unfortunate fact that many illnesses include a large or complete overlap of symptoms with “flu-like illness.” Whatever confusion may result from this fact is best settled by examining the symptoms outside of that overlap. In the case of COVID vs. the flu, the easiest symptom to focus on is anomia—the loss of taste or smell.
Here is a chart from the military health database (DMED) that instantly settles the question:
American Buddhist Net 