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It is not very useful to compare them with flu because people are much more likely to have flu than to have covid. These rates seem very small but remember that
by hristov 6y ago
It is not very useful to compare them with flu because people are much more likely to have flu than to have covid. These rates seem very small but remember that the study started in the beginning of february, when there were likely only a handful if any covid carriers in the uk.
If you could preselect a group of people that you know had covid and measure their death rate, the numbers are likely to be much higher. This study did not do this. This is probably because this would require that all patients are tested for covid as they visit their doctor and this was obviously not happening.
- MontagFTB 6y agoThanks for the clarification. I got the gist from the paper that testing in this cohort was higher than it apparently was.
- LoSboccacc 6y agoalso people with conditions vaccinate at a higher rate against the seasonal flu, further shifting the ratio
- eloff 6y agoAlso flu deaths have been greatly exaggerated. Which explains how with a supposed 50k flu deaths in a year in the USA, it has never inundated hospitals like this.
- jdminhbg 6y ago85k coronavirus deaths haven't inundated hospitals in the US either, except in the absolute epicenter in NYC, and even then not to the point originally feared. It's very easy to imagine 50k flu deaths geographically spread evenly not overwhelming US hospitals, especially given that they'd be spread over something like 3x the current coronavirus epidemic timespan. I'm very skeptical of the sudden "oh those flu deaths aren't real" narrative.
- eloff 6y agoOk, bad word choice with inundated, although NYC got pretty bad. You can be skeptical, but it does seem to be the case that flu deaths is actually a made up number. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-...
- dwaltrip 6y agoWhy do you think that 50k annual US flu deaths would be overwhelming the hospitals? It would also be fantastic if you could provide a credible source for this surprising claim that US flu deaths are greatly overstated.
- eloff 6y agohttps://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-...
- jansan 6y ago> It is not very useful to compare them with flu because people are much more likely to have flu than to have covid. What data is this based on?