evidence: Scientists debate how lethal COVID is. Some say it's now less risky than flu [...] "I believe that we have reached the point where, for an individual, COVID poses less of a risk of hospitalization and death than does influenza," Doron says. [...] "However you slice it, there was never an instance where COVID-19 was milder than the flu," says Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University in St. Louis, who has done research comparing COVID to the flu.