There is a lot that should have been learned from the pandemic. How science can advance when government is a partner instead of a gatekeeper. How important transparent communication and trustworthy data are to a message’s acceptance. How much we depend on our least-paid workforce to get through our lives.

But whether or not we have accepted any of those more debatable points, there are a couple that are more concrete.

The early opposition to covid-19 restrictions rested on one oft-repeated message: “It’s just like the flu.” The flu numbers for 2020 made it woefully clear the two diseases, while both attacking respiratory functions and being mild in much of the population while hitting others like a truck, have very real differences.

Sadly, the greatest difference was the number who died.

In 2019-20, the number of flu cases in Pennsylvania was high. It hit 129,912 with 102 deaths, despite a precipitous drop-off in the spring with covid shutdowns. In 2018-19, the season had fewer cases at just 99,308, but deaths were 60% higher at 161.

In 2020, covid-19 claimed 17,890 lives in Pennsylvania. In fact, every single month since April 2020, more Pennsylvanians have died as a result of covid than from the flu in the entire 2019-20 season — sometimes by staggeringly high percentages.

The 2020-21 season saw the flu numbers drop to just 3,664 confirmed cases and only 21 deaths. More people died of covid in January 2021 than caught the flu in an entire year.

This should be a very obvious lesson in what does work when it comes to infectious diseases. Keep your distance when sick, wash your hands, don’t cough near people, and, hey, a mask doesn’t hurt.

But look at the numbers of covid dead from 2020 to 2021, and you might see something else: the value of the vaccine. In April 2020, 3,400 Pennsylvanians died. A year later, four months into vaccinations, it was just 1,201. May 2020’s total was 2,639 compared with May 2021’s 863.

With September’s arrival, we are in the new flu season. Kids are back at school. The rainy remnants of Tropical Storm Ida will not be the last wet weather we encounter as we enter fall and trudge toward winter, the months when influenza’s bite is strongest.

Covid-19 isn’t the flu. But the flu still needs to be taken seriously.

— The Tribune-Review, Greensburg/TNS