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The 'cure' of endless and pointless lockdowns is indeed proving worse than the disease, particularly when the CDC estimates overall mortality from the virus wil

The 'cure' of endless and pointless lockdowns is indeed proving worse than the disease, particularly when the CDC estimates overall mortality from the virus will be only 0.4%: https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cdc-estimates-covid-19-mortality-rate/275-fc43f37f-6764-45e3-b615-123459f0082b https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cd... For reference the seasonal flu is 0.2%, for which we do... precisely nothing.

marcell 6y ago
I'm confused by the downvotes on this. The comment is quoting CDC numbers, this is not some fake news report. The 0.4% mortality for coronavirus is the CDC best estimate. The 0.2% is from the CDC website for the 2017 flu season. Edit: The parent comment has apparently been flag removed. But it was claiming that the reaction to coronavirus (lockdown) is worse than the damage from the virus, and used the above comparison to flu mortality to support this claim. I'm not sure why this comment was flag removed, since it used data to support a position.
- username90 6y ago
  People made the issue political in USA. So instead of thinking rationally and discussing facts people just vote along the party lines. Downplaying the disease makes them think that you are right wing and hence should be down-voted.
  - nunodonato 6y ago
    it just shows how brainwashed people are, even here on HN. Bogeyman corona is coming to eat you all!! Disregard facts, turn on the tv and continue to spit out fear.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  I'll bite. That percentage represents a million people in the US. It also doesn't represent the number of people who may experience shortened lifespans due to damage to their lungs or other organs. Also, the comment suggests that we do nothing for the flu, which is patently false. We organize massive vaccination efforts every year to combat the flu, we have readily available tests, and we have a well understood model for how it spreads and how to treat it (including antivirals if caught early.) Comparing it to the flu seems to be arguing in bad faith along political lines rather than deeply examining the issue.
  - username90 6y ago
    > Comparing it to the flu seems to be arguing in bad faith along political lines rather than deeply examining the issue. No it isn't. Before vaccine a normal flu season killed 0.1% of the population in a year. Not 0.1% of infected, 0.1% of everyone. Those kinds of numbers are not good, but they are not a catastrophe either, especially if it is just a single year. And to me it looks like Corona is roughly that dangerous, meaning it is like an Influenza we don't have a vaccine against. We should work hard to create a vaccine for this disease, just like we did for influenza, but I haven't seen anyone who did the math on if it is worth locking things down to prevent loss of life. People in the early 1900's didn't think it was worth it, and when I do the math with current mortality in Sweden which barely locked down then the numbers clearly show that a lockdown wasn't worth it. Influenza mortality by year, vaccine was created in the 1940's: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374803/bin/Doshi_F2_rev3.jpg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374803/bin/Dos...
    - xigency 6y ago
      Doing the math is an input but it isn’t the solution itself. The question of what to do is a policy decision which doesn’t have an objective right answer.
      - username90 6y ago
        The moral thing to do is to ask whether someone in their 20's would choose to lock down for a few months in order to slightly reduce the risk of dying in their 80's. I think we all know the answer to that. It is only a dilemma of the person would choose to do it for themselves but not others, the current measures would not be done by almost anyone for themselves.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  It seems pretty clear that the systemic effects of COVID-19 are much worse than those of seasonal flu. You don't see news of hospitals struggling to cope with seasonal flu the way we've seen now. You don't have Italian doctors triaging patients with the flu.
  - username90 6y ago
    > You don't see news of hospitals struggling to cope with seasonal flu the way we've seen now. You don't see this news because you aren't looking for it, Hospitals are struggling with influenza all the time. Example story: > Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    You do actually see hospitals struggling with bad flu seasons occasionally. I’m not sure if it’s more or less then from covid.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Don't actually see places struggling with this and coronavirus ... most of the overflow hospitals were empty. In places that have largely opened their economies back up we're not seeing any overwhelming of hospitals. We're also not seeing this in Sweden who never locked down. Flatening the curve could have been a myth, an incorrect response. There's no evidence showing that it was effective compared to control groups like Sweden and regions with reopened economies. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/06/827995726/in-new-york-overflow-hospitals-at-javits-and-on-navy-ship-have-been-largely-empt https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
- entee 6y ago
  Nearly 100,000 people have died of COVID19 and there’s good evidence that this is a substantial undercount. All this in a context where we shut down transmission vectors (being indoors, with lots of people). Most estimates I’ve seen suggest we’ll hit 150k-200k deaths by end of year. 2017-2018 flu season killed about 80,000 with no mitigation efforts. Just on the face of it, this virus is far more than 2x deadlier than the flu.
  - marcell 6y ago
    Sure, but 2x deadlier than the flu just means 2 flu seasons. It's not great, but we don't do half-lockdowns fur 1 flu season. Why do a full lockdown for the equivalent of two flu seasons?
    - xigency 6y ago
      What would the numbers look like without mitigations? There are certainly some flu seasons that are 2x worse than average. I imagine that the cutoff between no action and hard mitigation would be a 10x flu event. It seems plausible to me that this would have been 10x the flu with business as usual. That still doesn’t do accounting for the negative effects of mitigation. The truth is that this is an open-ended ethical question and it’s not fun to participate in.
      - username90 6y ago
        > What would the numbers look like without mitigations? Look at Sweden, you'll find that their very light measures are not worse than the very late but much stronger measures of harder hit areas.
        samvher 6y ago
        If you compare Sweden to the other Scandinavian countries (which is the most suitable comparison considering population distribution and habits) the light measures actually seem to have resulted in a much higher prevalence. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/sweden-coronavirus-response-less-economic-damage-more-disease https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/sweden-co...
- samvher 6y ago
  I do think the CDC numbers seem strange - when I search for "flu IFR" and "coronavirus IFR" what I find for flu is 0.04-0.2% and for coronavirus it's more like 0.4-1%. So these CDC best estimates seem to make the comparison more favorable than the numbers found in other places. It seems like a factor 6 or so difference is realistic, which makes it quite a bit more serious than the flu. One thing that worries me more about coronavirus than the flu is that it can cause lasting lung damage. I personally think that the higher mortality and the possibility of permanent damage in people who survive justify restrictions, but I guess that's a matter of opinion.
  - thebladerunner 6y ago
    To add to the confusion, the CDC website is calling this number CFR (not IFR), which doesn't make sense to me at all.
  - username90 6y ago
    > One thing that worries me more about coronavirus than the flu is that it can cause lasting lung damage. Flu can also cause lasting lung damage. All diseases inducing pneumonia can do that. I have seen no evidence that these things are more prevalent in corona than in influenza. The reason we see so many articles about the rare effects in corona and not the flu is that corona is a hot topic and news is drumming up scare stories about it for clicks. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30209189/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30209189/
    - samvher 6y ago
      I agree there is no clear evidence on the prevalence in coronavirus vs flu but I think as a naive estimate it's reasonable to suspect that if it's around 6x more deadly, that serious side effects are similarly more prevalent. Considering we don't know the disease very well it seems better to err on the side of caution.
  - marcell 6y ago
    Sidebar, but I simply cannot figure out how the CDC estimates flu mortality. I've spent about an hour trying to find the info, and gave up. I was able to figure out how they estimate flu deaths: they take the officially diagnosed deaths, and the multiply it by a factor based on presumed deaths. For example, they assume some % of pneumonia deaths are cause by the flu. But I simply cannot figure out how they estimate the number of flu infections per year, which is the other half of IFR. It obviously is a statistical model (they don't do millions of flu tests a year), but what is the model? Without this info, it's really not an apples-to-apples comparison when you take flu IFR and compare it to coronavirus IFR.
- DanBC 6y ago
  It's comparing 0.4% and 0.2% but not mentioning infectiousness (covid-19 appears more transmissible). 0.4% of a very large number will be considerably more people than 0.2% of a much smaller number. It says we do precisely nothing for flu and that's incorrect. We have internationally coordinated programmes of vaccine development and we have annual programmes to vaccinate as many vulnerable people and healthcare workers as possible. We have programmes of flu monitoring and surveillance that tell us what strains of flu are circulating, who is being affected by it, and whether we need to create more surge capacity. Notice that flu always puts pressure on healthcare systems -- hospitals get fuller, and they often try not to book as many elective surgeries during winter -- but they're not, even in bad flu seasons, overwhelmed. We don't have temporary morgues set up in container lorries in car parks. Funeral homes don't get overwhelmed.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    The flu infects an average of a billion people annually. That’s a big number.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    This is proving not to be an issue in Sweden or any of the places that have already opened up their economies. Flattening the curve was a myth potentially.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      The very high death rate in Sweden suggests otherwise.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        Sweden's death rate is below Italy UK Spain and Belgium all of which enacted full quarantines. Not sure why you're giving incomplete and somewhat sensational fear inducing information.
        EdwardCoffin 6y ago
- akiselev 6y ago
  The disclaimer is in the CDC link: > The scenarios are intended to advance public health preparedness and planning. They are not predictions or estimates of the expected impact of COVID-19.
nunodonato 6y ago
fortunately, more and more scientists and doctors are stepping up and being public about why all of this lockdown and social distancing thing is not only useless, but harmful. Unfortunately, not only they don't get much air time in mass media, as they end up being censored by YouTube. Makes you wonder why...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thebladerunner 6y ago
  Links?
  - nunodonato 6y ago
    This was the most recent one: Dr Dolores J. Cahill PhD Immunology and molecular biologist - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ti6isM-NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ti6isM-NY I'll hop by later a drop some more if you want
  - thebladerunner 6y ago
    Re: YouTube video you linked below. The table shown by that Dr in the first few minutes was enough to discredit her (claiming Covid-19 is not transmitted by air, only kills 80+ year olds, etc.) All falsehoods.
- andybak 6y ago
  > Makes you wonder why... Come out and tell us. I'd like to hear a broad summary of your position. I do suspect it's a trifle more conspiracy-leaning than you're currently making out. Ending with a dog-whistle like this rather amplifies that impression. (I browse HN with showdead switched on which adds context to some comments that are easy to miss otherwise) I think there's a valid debate to be had about mortality, unexpected consequences and over-reaction but the minute I start looking into that side of the argument I quickly get lost in the thickets of bizarre conspiracy theories and extremist views. And even short of the crazies - there is some terribly ingenuous cherry-picking of data (although admittedly both sides of the debate do this - as is sadly true with most public discourse)

marcell 6y ago

I'm confused by the downvotes on this. The comment is quoting CDC numbers, this is not some fake news report. The 0.4% mortality for coronavirus is the CDC best estimate. The 0.2% is from the CDC website for the 2017 flu season. Edit: The parent comment has apparently been flag removed. But it was claiming that the reaction to coronavirus (lockdown) is worse than the damage from the virus, and used the above comparison to flu mortality to support this claim. I'm not sure why this comment was flag removed, since it used data to support a position.

username90 6y ago
People made the issue political in USA. So instead of thinking rationally and discussing facts people just vote along the party lines. Downplaying the disease makes them think that you are right wing and hence should be down-voted.
- nunodonato 6y ago
  it just shows how brainwashed people are, even here on HN. Bogeyman corona is coming to eat you all!! Disregard facts, turn on the tv and continue to spit out fear.
Pfhreak 6y ago
I'll bite. That percentage represents a million people in the US. It also doesn't represent the number of people who may experience shortened lifespans due to damage to their lungs or other organs. Also, the comment suggests that we do nothing for the flu, which is patently false. We organize massive vaccination efforts every year to combat the flu, we have readily available tests, and we have a well understood model for how it spreads and how to treat it (including antivirals if caught early.) Comparing it to the flu seems to be arguing in bad faith along political lines rather than deeply examining the issue.
- username90 6y ago
  > Comparing it to the flu seems to be arguing in bad faith along political lines rather than deeply examining the issue. No it isn't. Before vaccine a normal flu season killed 0.1% of the population in a year. Not 0.1% of infected, 0.1% of everyone. Those kinds of numbers are not good, but they are not a catastrophe either, especially if it is just a single year. And to me it looks like Corona is roughly that dangerous, meaning it is like an Influenza we don't have a vaccine against. We should work hard to create a vaccine for this disease, just like we did for influenza, but I haven't seen anyone who did the math on if it is worth locking things down to prevent loss of life. People in the early 1900's didn't think it was worth it, and when I do the math with current mortality in Sweden which barely locked down then the numbers clearly show that a lockdown wasn't worth it. Influenza mortality by year, vaccine was created in the 1940's: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374803/bin/Doshi_F2_rev3.jpg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374803/bin/Dos...
  - xigency 6y ago
    Doing the math is an input but it isn’t the solution itself. The question of what to do is a policy decision which doesn’t have an objective right answer.
    - username90 6y ago
      The moral thing to do is to ask whether someone in their 20's would choose to lock down for a few months in order to slightly reduce the risk of dying in their 80's. I think we all know the answer to that. It is only a dilemma of the person would choose to do it for themselves but not others, the current measures would not be done by almost anyone for themselves.
rebuilder 6y ago
It seems pretty clear that the systemic effects of COVID-19 are much worse than those of seasonal flu. You don't see news of hospitals struggling to cope with seasonal flu the way we've seen now. You don't have Italian doctors triaging patients with the flu.
- username90 6y ago
  > You don't see news of hospitals struggling to cope with seasonal flu the way we've seen now. You don't see this news because you aren't looking for it, Hospitals are struggling with influenza all the time. Example story: > Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
- akvadrako 6y ago
  You do actually see hospitals struggling with bad flu seasons occasionally. I’m not sure if it’s more or less then from covid.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Don't actually see places struggling with this and coronavirus ... most of the overflow hospitals were empty. In places that have largely opened their economies back up we're not seeing any overwhelming of hospitals. We're also not seeing this in Sweden who never locked down. Flatening the curve could have been a myth, an incorrect response. There's no evidence showing that it was effective compared to control groups like Sweden and regions with reopened economies. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/06/827995726/in-new-york-overflow-hospitals-at-javits-and-on-navy-ship-have-been-largely-empt https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
entee 6y ago
Nearly 100,000 people have died of COVID19 and there’s good evidence that this is a substantial undercount. All this in a context where we shut down transmission vectors (being indoors, with lots of people). Most estimates I’ve seen suggest we’ll hit 150k-200k deaths by end of year. 2017-2018 flu season killed about 80,000 with no mitigation efforts. Just on the face of it, this virus is far more than 2x deadlier than the flu.
- marcell 6y ago
  Sure, but 2x deadlier than the flu just means 2 flu seasons. It's not great, but we don't do half-lockdowns fur 1 flu season. Why do a full lockdown for the equivalent of two flu seasons?
  - xigency 6y ago
    What would the numbers look like without mitigations? There are certainly some flu seasons that are 2x worse than average. I imagine that the cutoff between no action and hard mitigation would be a 10x flu event. It seems plausible to me that this would have been 10x the flu with business as usual. That still doesn’t do accounting for the negative effects of mitigation. The truth is that this is an open-ended ethical question and it’s not fun to participate in.
    - username90 6y ago
      > What would the numbers look like without mitigations? Look at Sweden, you'll find that their very light measures are not worse than the very late but much stronger measures of harder hit areas.
      - samvher 6y ago
        If you compare Sweden to the other Scandinavian countries (which is the most suitable comparison considering population distribution and habits) the light measures actually seem to have resulted in a much higher prevalence. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/sweden-coronavirus-response-less-economic-damage-more-disease https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/sweden-co...
samvher 6y ago
I do think the CDC numbers seem strange - when I search for "flu IFR" and "coronavirus IFR" what I find for flu is 0.04-0.2% and for coronavirus it's more like 0.4-1%. So these CDC best estimates seem to make the comparison more favorable than the numbers found in other places. It seems like a factor 6 or so difference is realistic, which makes it quite a bit more serious than the flu. One thing that worries me more about coronavirus than the flu is that it can cause lasting lung damage. I personally think that the higher mortality and the possibility of permanent damage in people who survive justify restrictions, but I guess that's a matter of opinion.
- thebladerunner 6y ago
  To add to the confusion, the CDC website is calling this number CFR (not IFR), which doesn't make sense to me at all.
- username90 6y ago
  > One thing that worries me more about coronavirus than the flu is that it can cause lasting lung damage. Flu can also cause lasting lung damage. All diseases inducing pneumonia can do that. I have seen no evidence that these things are more prevalent in corona than in influenza. The reason we see so many articles about the rare effects in corona and not the flu is that corona is a hot topic and news is drumming up scare stories about it for clicks. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30209189/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30209189/
  - samvher 6y ago
    I agree there is no clear evidence on the prevalence in coronavirus vs flu but I think as a naive estimate it's reasonable to suspect that if it's around 6x more deadly, that serious side effects are similarly more prevalent. Considering we don't know the disease very well it seems better to err on the side of caution.
- marcell 6y ago
  Sidebar, but I simply cannot figure out how the CDC estimates flu mortality. I've spent about an hour trying to find the info, and gave up. I was able to figure out how they estimate flu deaths: they take the officially diagnosed deaths, and the multiply it by a factor based on presumed deaths. For example, they assume some % of pneumonia deaths are cause by the flu. But I simply cannot figure out how they estimate the number of flu infections per year, which is the other half of IFR. It obviously is a statistical model (they don't do millions of flu tests a year), but what is the model? Without this info, it's really not an apples-to-apples comparison when you take flu IFR and compare it to coronavirus IFR.
DanBC 6y ago
It's comparing 0.4% and 0.2% but not mentioning infectiousness (covid-19 appears more transmissible). 0.4% of a very large number will be considerably more people than 0.2% of a much smaller number. It says we do precisely nothing for flu and that's incorrect. We have internationally coordinated programmes of vaccine development and we have annual programmes to vaccinate as many vulnerable people and healthcare workers as possible. We have programmes of flu monitoring and surveillance that tell us what strains of flu are circulating, who is being affected by it, and whether we need to create more surge capacity. Notice that flu always puts pressure on healthcare systems -- hospitals get fuller, and they often try not to book as many elective surgeries during winter -- but they're not, even in bad flu seasons, overwhelmed. We don't have temporary morgues set up in container lorries in car parks. Funeral homes don't get overwhelmed.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  The flu infects an average of a billion people annually. That’s a big number.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  This is proving not to be an issue in Sweden or any of the places that have already opened up their economies. Flattening the curve was a myth potentially.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    The very high death rate in Sweden suggests otherwise.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      Sweden's death rate is below Italy UK Spain and Belgium all of which enacted full quarantines. Not sure why you're giving incomplete and somewhat sensational fear inducing information.
      - EdwardCoffin 6y ago
akiselev 6y ago
The disclaimer is in the CDC link: > The scenarios are intended to advance public health preparedness and planning. They are not predictions or estimates of the expected impact of COVID-19.

nunodonato 6y ago

fortunately, more and more scientists and doctors are stepping up and being public about why all of this lockdown and social distancing thing is not only useless, but harmful. Unfortunately, not only they don't get much air time in mass media, as they end up being censored by YouTube. Makes you wonder why...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thebladerunner 6y ago
Links?
- nunodonato 6y ago
  This was the most recent one: Dr Dolores J. Cahill PhD Immunology and molecular biologist - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ti6isM-NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ti6isM-NY I'll hop by later a drop some more if you want
- thebladerunner 6y ago
  Re: YouTube video you linked below. The table shown by that Dr in the first few minutes was enough to discredit her (claiming Covid-19 is not transmitted by air, only kills 80+ year olds, etc.) All falsehoods.
andybak 6y ago
> Makes you wonder why... Come out and tell us. I'd like to hear a broad summary of your position. I do suspect it's a trifle more conspiracy-leaning than you're currently making out. Ending with a dog-whistle like this rather amplifies that impression. (I browse HN with showdead switched on which adds context to some comments that are easy to miss otherwise) I think there's a valid debate to be had about mortality, unexpected consequences and over-reaction but the minute I start looking into that side of the argument I quickly get lost in the thickets of bizarre conspiracy theories and extremist views. And even short of the crazies - there is some terribly ingenuous cherry-picking of data (although admittedly both sides of the debate do this - as is sadly true with most public discourse)