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For comparison, from what I've read the typical annual influenza fatality rate is around 0.1% (don't know what the under-70 rate would be). So, this puts covid
by rossdavidh 6y ago
For comparison, from what I've read the typical annual influenza fatality rate is around 0.1% (don't know what the under-70 rate would be). So, this puts covid-19 solidly in the uncanny valley of viral mortality rates; not low enough to be "just like a flu", not high enough to justify shutting down the world. No wonder opinions on it are so divided.
- maxerickson 6y ago3 deaths per 1000 infections is a pretty strong motivation to prevent infections, it doesn't need to be a contest between doing nothing and shutting down the world, strategies for reducing transmission can be independently evaluated. And when you add in fewer older people getting infected when there are fewer infections in general, well, there you go.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoExtreme poverty is expected increased by 150 million people world wide bc of Covid. I'd wager there's a lot of people whose kids are running around a shantytown shoeless who would disagree with your levels of risk.
- maxerickson 6y agoI don't understand what part of my comment you are responding to.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- peteretep 6y agoWhy 3 in 1,000 and what’s the threshold you’d accept and why?
- maxerickson 6y agoThe initial headline of the article stated that the infection fatality rate for people under 70 is 0.3%. 'threshold you'd accept' isn't a response to my comment, which expressly rejects the idea that there are only 2 options. Some mitigations are only justified by very high levels of risk. Others are justified by much lower levels of risk.
- dirkt 6y ago(1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people. (2) We all have seen the images of hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, not having enough breathers, etc. For some reason this doesn't happen with the typical annual influenza ... If you reduce everything to statistics about mortality rates, you are missing very important parts of the picture.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago(1) Need sources. This is extremely extremely extremely rare if so, and very speculative and unproven with no hard science. (2) This is also extremely extremely rare in under 70 population. Horrible things happen ALL THE TIME but there's a statistically miniscule chance of it happening to you. Everything in life is dangerous if you look at life the way you're championing. I think you might just be scared of LIFE in general.
- conception 6y ago1) long covid is still being studied, obviously, but there are many cases of it - https://bgr.com/2020/08/21/coronavirus-symptoms-long-covid-study/# https://bgr.com/2020/08/21/coronavirus-symptoms-long-covid-s... It’s a disease that attacks your organs, there’s going to be damage.
- logicchains 6y agoI don't think anybody's denying it exists. What hasn't been shown is if long-term consequences are more prevalant with covid than with other viral lung infections.
- lima 6y agoStudies on long-term consequences of a virus that has been around for <1 year?
- logicchains 6y ago
- rich_sasha 6y agoI guess not so many people get flu? I don't regularly get vaccinated, and I only had 1 flu-like disease in the last decade. Covid is way more virulent. If 10x more people get it, it doesn't need to be more deadly in terms of IFR to be a concern.
- gridlockd 6y ago> If 10x more people get it, it doesn't need to be more deadly in terms of IFR to be a concern. Sure, but what sort of concern? A "shut down everything, COVID-cases are rising!" sort of concern?
- noja 6y agoApple and oranges. That flu fatality rate is without social distancing.
- qwerty1234599 6y agoAnd 40% of the population getting a influenza vaccine yearly.
- nate_meurer 6y agoNo, IFR is the infection fatality rate. It's the number of fatalities divided by the number of infections. If you reduce the infection rate, the proportion of those infections that results in death will not change. This of course doesn't apply if healthcare systems are overwhelmed, but that's not what we're talking about here.
- noja 6y agoWe don't test for who has flu.
- anoncake 6y agoThat does not affect the IFR, it just make it harder to measure.
- nate_meurer 6y ago
- qwerty1234599 6y agoDaily reminder: new respitory diseases come and go, nobody usually cares. What makes Covid different and what caused the shutdowns was when Lombardy alone had 450 deaths a day. No regular influenza could do that. It's not as if we decided out of thin air the virus was dangerous.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- timr 6y ago"No regular influenza could do that." Sure it could. The whole point of the IFR calculation is that it gives you an average perspective on how fatal a disease is, relative to other diseases. It's not an absolute maximum fatality rate, for every circumstance. Put a strain of "normal" flu in a vulnerable population with no pre-existing immunity, and it would do a lot of damage. But if you don't count all the other people who had it without symptoms, then you get a misleading picture. Also, of course, you have to realize that the population of "Lombardy" (~10M) is a bit larger than the population of New York City (~8M), where we see 100-300 deaths per day as a baseline mortality rate: https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/population-geography/pop-characteristics.htm https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/population-geography/pop...
- bonzini 6y ago450 deaths a day was not the total, those were only those from confirmed COVID patients. Excess mortality was more like 650.
- timr 6y agoCitation required (I've looked, and all I can find are annual mortality rates per capita, which are higher, certainly, but not double the rate for a year). Even if you're right, a doubling of baseline mortality per day is certainly something plausible for influenza in specific scenarios. Italy as a whole is now seeing new cases per day roughly twice that observed in the spring, and yet deaths are up a tiny fraction of what you would expect from the Lombardy example. So it's not clear that Lombardy represents a typical outcome, even for Italy: http://opendatadpc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html http://opendatadpc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... Point being, again, it's difficult to draw conclusions from data points that are on the extremes of the distribution. The IFR is a measurement of average behavior.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoWhat you need to look is not fatality rate, but total fatalities caused by the disease. Flu kills 60000 a year max in US, Covid kills 5x that number. And it is unclear what will be a fatality rate for younger people whose organs are damaged by previous infection.
- dicomdan 6y agoYour math doesn’t add up.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoClarify please.
- ekianjo 6y ago> Flu kills 60000 a year max in US These numbers are patently false. If this was even remotely true pretty much every family would know someone who has died from the flu at some point. The flu numbers are statistical evaluations based on no actual death counts. The real numbers of deaths from the flu are very likely much, much smaller.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoI dunno, CDC says that.
- ghaff 6y agoIt's usually less than that (but still in the tens of thousands). But 2017-18 was estimated at >60,000. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html#:~:text=While%20the%20impact%20of%20flu,61%2C000%20deaths%20annually%20since%202010 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html#:~:text=Whil.... You are of course welcome to ignore the CDC. You have a lot of company these days.
- __blockcipher__ 6y agoYour logic is actually backwards. Flu is extrapolated but it’s extrapolated fairly. Whereas for COVID-19 we perform mass testing and label every PCR-positive death a COVID death. I hope it’s self evident why that approach will massively inflate COVID deaths but if you would like I can break it down in detail for you.
- cma 6y ago0.1% for flu is of symptomatic infections. I think covid would get another near ~2X multiplier under the same measure.
- marvin 6y agoCovid-19 is perfectly evolutionarily adapted to fit into this gap. Its divisive ability has practically been evolutionarily selected for.
- undersuit 6y agoThat's wonderful, the virus is literally political.
- ikeboy 6y agoThe flu also affects older people more. If you compare flu IFR to COVID by the same age group, covid is more dangerous across all age groups. (I did the math myself using CDC estimates for both the flu and covid and assuming a 50% asymptomatic rate for the flu.)