ABSTRACT
Giorgio Agamben, an old friend, argues that the coronavirus is hardly different from a normal flu (Agamben, 2020). He forgets that for the “normal” flu there is a vaccine that has been proven effective, but even that needs to be readapted to viral mutations year after year. Despite this, the “normal” flu always kills some number of people, while coronavirus, against which there is no vaccine, is evidently capable of causing far higher levels of mortality. The difference (according to sources of the same type as those Agamben uses) is about 1 to 30: it does not seem an insignificant difference to me.
