What is this telling us?

Couple of different factors at play here that would explain some things

1) The Basic Reproduction Number is much higher for Covid

As you can see, seasonal influenza is 0.9-2.1, Covid is 3.28-5.7
(and that was influenza's number based an average of infection-producing contacts over a period of time...which has obviously been drastically reduced this year with the measures put in place to fight covid). So if you take a virus that was 0.9-2.1 under normal circumstances, and compare to a virus that's been 3.28-5.7 under very strict measures that drastically reduce our number of contacts with other people, if the "new normal" had been the "old normal", the flu's numbers would probably be even lower.

Not to mention, new variants have been popping up that are even more contagious than the original variant.

2) with regards to testing, most people don't really care to get tested for influenza, they just know they have it based on the symptoms, and stay home. As where, a novel virus is something that people are going to be more curious if they have it or not. I've had the flu probably 2 dozen times in my 37 years if I had to guess...never once gotten a flu test. However, I've had multiple covid tests and even paid to get the antibody test (out of curiosity) and I'm sure many others are the same way.

3) I think the controls work fairly well when they're actually followed, but there seems to be a pattern of people following them in public settings, but not in private settings. For instance, there are people who will wear the mask, socially distance, etc... when they're in a grocery store, but may not be adhering to those as strictly in private settings.

jacks said:

Bottom line, is this information makes me think that the Covid virus is way more contagious than regular flu.

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I agree. I also demonstrates that the efforts made to slow down the spread of Covid were quite effective since they seemed to have quite a positive impact on the spread of the flu. They probably saved a lot of lives.

I think that you are correct on several points. You are correct that this is far more infectious than the common flu and that we do not yet have a solid handle on it. But by far the biggest factor is that a huge number of us are still not taking it seriously enough to follow the protocols rigorously. If Donald Trump was a real "wartime president" he like Churchill and Roosevelt would have told us the truth from the beginning rather than the lies and denials that he did feed us.

people are wearing masks & social distancing so it stands to reason that those will also protect from flu

jacks said:

Bottom line, is this information makes me think that the Covid virus is way more contagious than regular flu.

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This much seems obvious, although we are used to seasonal flu being very widespread.

The measures against COVID work against any contagious disease, and especially those that are normally spread via droplets exhaled from the mouth/nose.

You should see this as evidence that we are probably having some success against COVID and if there were no measures taken that a lot more people would be sick and dead.

Is there another explanation? It's making me think our controls aren't working as well as we may hope, not because they aren't being followed, rather because we still don't understand this virus very well? Anything you could say to make me feel better would be appreciated.

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The controls aren't working very well because even if followed they would only limit the spread rather than stopping it completely.

That's what people don't seem to understand.