4 ms·

You're repeating the article with some grandiose hand-waving to compare it to the flu, when it's already killed 5x any flu season in just 4 months :/

Jabbles 6y ago
I don't think you read my comment at all.
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  Gotcha, in that case I think the point got lost in the mix. Would love to engage with it more though, seems like you're passionate and knowledgable about this.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  The problem is you start by comparing this to the flu. People are going to stop reading after that because it's generally a pattern of another idiot rambling. Don't write in that pattern if you don't want people to interpret it in that pattern.
  - Jabbles 6y ago
    Yes judging from the responses that seems to be what happened. Maybe I could compare it to car accidents - we don't ban driving because the costs would be enormous. I hope that doesn't spawn replies about self-driving cars...
    - anoncareer0212 6y ago
      Hey, we love discussion on HN, we honestly want to hear more from you - but we try to avoid the sort of meta-conversations where people end up reading their interlocutors as a united opposition with strawman positions. You should totally reply to them with more info about what you're trying to say, they're probably being honest about being confused :)
    - aaomidi 6y ago
      Well, the difference between this and your examples is that it was a novel situation. The question always comes to would you rather over react or under react to a novel pandemic? It's also interesting that this conversation about economics isn't spreading more towards alright now that we have this lock down are there any monetary policy changes we can make to allow us to adapt to this? Many other countries have dealt with the economic consequences of the lockdown better than the US, despite being poorer countries.
wk_end 6y ago
Apologies for the pedantry, but whether you're looking at national (US) or international numbers, COVID-19 has killed "only" about as many people as a flu season. ~300k have died from COVID-19 in the world, which matches the WHO's estimate of 290k to 650k per year for the flu, and ~80k in the US almost exactly matches American numbers for the flu a couple of years ago [2] [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(seasonal) https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(... [2] https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter... Moreover, comparing the flu season to "just 4 months" is disingenuous. That's...roughly as long or even longer than what most people consider the flu season. Of course, this is due to the lockdowns. I'm not trying to make the case that COVID-19 is "just a flu". we'd almost certainly be seeing much worse numbers if people weren't social distancing or whatever. And we're not finished yet.
- DanBC 6y ago
  You are not counting flu and covid using the same methods, which is causing you to either undercount covid deaths or overcount flu deaths. If you count covid and flu using the same method you see far more covid deaths. Here for covid you're using "died after testing positive for covid", and for flu you're using "died after testing positive for flu or with presumed flu". You can see these are different.
  - wk_end 6y ago
    Sorry, I wasn't aware that I was doing that - I'm just using the official numbers I've got on hand. Can you provide any sources that provide an estimate that better lines up with the claim that COVID has "already killed 5x [more than] any flu season"? I know that different states and countries are reporting COVID deaths differently. I've seen "shutdown skeptics" claim that the reason Belgium and New York and Sweden's official numbers look so bad is because of this: supposedly they're using a methodology closer to the one you claim is being used to source the flu numbers, unlike everyone else. So I don't think my official numbers are purely what you claim they are, but probably a mix of different methodologies. Even if on balance that's producing an undercount, do we have evidence for something like an undercount by a factor of five? The former I'd be happy to accept, the latter is a bit of an extraordinary claim and calls for the evidence to match. Neither of my sources for the flu numbers say their number was derived in the way you're suggesting - the US one in particular says that it's an estimate using a statistical model rather than a count anything like what you're saying. Did I miss something in the sources?
mcphage 6y ago
> in just 4 months Well, mostly in just 1 month—we entered April with around 5,000 US deaths, and exited it with over 60,000. So that's about 55,000 deaths in a single month.

Jabbles 6y ago

I don't think you read my comment at all.

anoncareer0212 6y ago
Gotcha, in that case I think the point got lost in the mix. Would love to engage with it more though, seems like you're passionate and knowledgable about this.
aaomidi 6y ago
The problem is you start by comparing this to the flu. People are going to stop reading after that because it's generally a pattern of another idiot rambling. Don't write in that pattern if you don't want people to interpret it in that pattern.
- Jabbles 6y ago
  Yes judging from the responses that seems to be what happened. Maybe I could compare it to car accidents - we don't ban driving because the costs would be enormous. I hope that doesn't spawn replies about self-driving cars...
  - anoncareer0212 6y ago
    Hey, we love discussion on HN, we honestly want to hear more from you - but we try to avoid the sort of meta-conversations where people end up reading their interlocutors as a united opposition with strawman positions. You should totally reply to them with more info about what you're trying to say, they're probably being honest about being confused :)
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Well, the difference between this and your examples is that it was a novel situation. The question always comes to would you rather over react or under react to a novel pandemic? It's also interesting that this conversation about economics isn't spreading more towards alright now that we have this lock down are there any monetary policy changes we can make to allow us to adapt to this? Many other countries have dealt with the economic consequences of the lockdown better than the US, despite being poorer countries.

wk_end 6y ago

Apologies for the pedantry, but whether you're looking at national (US) or international numbers, COVID-19 has killed "only" about as many people as a flu season. ~300k have died from COVID-19 in the world, which matches the WHO's estimate of 290k to 650k per year for the flu, and ~80k in the US almost exactly matches American numbers for the flu a couple of years ago [2] [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(seasonal) https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(... [2] https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter... Moreover, comparing the flu season to "just 4 months" is disingenuous. That's...roughly as long or even longer than what most people consider the flu season. Of course, this is due to the lockdowns. I'm not trying to make the case that COVID-19 is "just a flu". we'd almost certainly be seeing much worse numbers if people weren't social distancing or whatever. And we're not finished yet.

DanBC 6y ago
You are not counting flu and covid using the same methods, which is causing you to either undercount covid deaths or overcount flu deaths. If you count covid and flu using the same method you see far more covid deaths. Here for covid you're using "died after testing positive for covid", and for flu you're using "died after testing positive for flu or with presumed flu". You can see these are different.
- wk_end 6y ago
  Sorry, I wasn't aware that I was doing that - I'm just using the official numbers I've got on hand. Can you provide any sources that provide an estimate that better lines up with the claim that COVID has "already killed 5x [more than] any flu season"? I know that different states and countries are reporting COVID deaths differently. I've seen "shutdown skeptics" claim that the reason Belgium and New York and Sweden's official numbers look so bad is because of this: supposedly they're using a methodology closer to the one you claim is being used to source the flu numbers, unlike everyone else. So I don't think my official numbers are purely what you claim they are, but probably a mix of different methodologies. Even if on balance that's producing an undercount, do we have evidence for something like an undercount by a factor of five? The former I'd be happy to accept, the latter is a bit of an extraordinary claim and calls for the evidence to match. Neither of my sources for the flu numbers say their number was derived in the way you're suggesting - the US one in particular says that it's an estimate using a statistical model rather than a count anything like what you're saying. Did I miss something in the sources?

mcphage 6y ago

> in just 4 months Well, mostly in just 1 month—we entered April with around 5,000 US deaths, and exited it with over 60,000. So that's about 55,000 deaths in a single month.