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> It's also worth calling out the flu has killed 2X as many people as COVID has to date this flu season. No, it hasn't. > A bad flu season in the US kills abo

by DanBC 7y ago

> It's also worth calling out the flu has killed 2X as many people as COVID has to date this flu season. No, it hasn't. > A bad flu season in the US kills about 60K people each year. You're not counting covid-19 deaths and flu deaths using the same methods so you can't compare yet. The method you're using for flu is inclusive and will tend to overcount. The method you're using for covid-19 deaths excludes some deaths and we know it's undercounting covid-19 deaths. When we get the figures for care home and nursing home deaths included we'll see large increases in covid-19 deaths. It is dishonest to point to a severe flu season and talk about "flu killing 60k people per year". The range is 12k to 61k. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

arcticbull 7y ago
> No, it hasn't. Yes, it has. Citation needed, because I provided data and you didn't. > You're not counting covid-19 deaths and flu deaths using the same methods so you can't compare yet. The method you're using for flu is inclusive and will tend to overcount. The method you're using for covid-19 deaths excludes some deaths and we know it's undercounting covid-19 deaths. [citation needed] > When we get the figures for care home and nursing home deaths included we'll see large increases in covid-19 deaths. That's a totally dishonest way of approaching this when we know for a fact people under 50 have basically no risk from COVID and that folks who are over 70 have easily two orders of magnitude higher risk. In Italy, 99.2% of people who died were age 80.5 and had an average of 3 underlying diseases. Age 30-39 they had 5 deaths, under 30, 0 deaths at the time this article was written [1] as compared to 852 deaths aged 80-89. You and I both know the young aren't affected meaningfully, and for them, they won't go to the hospital with a mild cough or with no symptoms at all and so aren't counted in the denominator. You're advocating growing the numerator without growing the denominator to make your case seem stronger than it is. > It is dishonest to point to a severe flu season and talk about "flu killing 60k people per year". The range is 12k to 61k. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html I don't think it's crazy to compare a "bad COVID year" to a "bad flu year" do you? Our response to a bad flu year is exactly the same as our response to a good flu year. Most people don't really know there is such a thing. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho...

by DanBC 7y ago

arcticbull 7y ago

> No, it hasn't. Yes, it has. Citation needed, because I provided data and you didn't. > You're not counting covid-19 deaths and flu deaths using the same methods so you can't compare yet. The method you're using for flu is inclusive and will tend to overcount. The method you're using for covid-19 deaths excludes some deaths and we know it's undercounting covid-19 deaths. [citation needed] > When we get the figures for care home and nursing home deaths included we'll see large increases in covid-19 deaths. That's a totally dishonest way of approaching this when we know for a fact people under 50 have basically no risk from COVID and that folks who are over 70 have easily two orders of magnitude higher risk. In Italy, 99.2% of people who died were age 80.5 and had an average of 3 underlying diseases. Age 30-39 they had 5 deaths, under 30, 0 deaths at the time this article was written [1] as compared to 852 deaths aged 80-89. You and I both know the young aren't affected meaningfully, and for them, they won't go to the hospital with a mild cough or with no symptoms at all and so aren't counted in the denominator. You're advocating growing the numerator without growing the denominator to make your case seem stronger than it is. > It is dishonest to point to a severe flu season and talk about "flu killing 60k people per year". The range is 12k to 61k. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html I don't think it's crazy to compare a "bad COVID year" to a "bad flu year" do you? Our response to a bad flu year is exactly the same as our response to a good flu year. Most people don't really know there is such a thing. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho...