4 ms·

Not disagreeing that Covid19 is a much more lethal disease, can you point to some reference that compares covid death to flu related death (prior to covid).

ajross 5y ago
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html Worst season in recent memory was 61k deaths among influenza patients. Last year saw 600k americans die of covid. Meanwhile flu fatalities cratered due to the pandemic response. Full data isn't available yet, but this site has some details (e.g. pediatric flu deaths dropped between 37x and 199x -- there was ONE child who died of the flu last year): https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm
- Izkata 5y ago
  > Worst season in recent memory was 61k deaths among influenza patients. Last year saw 600k americans die of covid. Those aren't directly comparable because the various flus have been circulating for years/decades and people have died all across that time. While people do have cross-immunity with sars-cov-2 and other coronaviruses, sars-cov-2 is new so it's hitting those decades of people all at once. The currently estimated IFR across all age groups is around 0.15%, putting it on-par with the flu (something like 0.07% IIRC; this one is hard to pin down because there's a lot of different flus). And in the past few months, cases have spiked without a spike in deaths all over the place, so that 0.15% is probably going to drop more, especially with indications that the Delta variant is more infections but less serious. (That said the effect the past few months could be the effect of the vaccines; it's not clear to me if that's supposed to affect the estimated IFR or that estimation is for a vulnerable population (but I'm not sure how you could estimate a vulnerable population for one that's been around for a while, so I think it does still count))
  - ajross 5y ago
    > The currently estimated IFR across all age groups is around 0.15%, putting it on-par with the flu Yeah, that's gonna need one hell of a cite. This is false.
    - timr 5y ago
      The OP correct about best estimates for IFR at a global level, and you shouldn't be dismissing the number out-of-hand. The difficulty with "global average IFR" is that it neglects the massive variation in IFR by age. This Nature paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0 made an attempt to break down the IFR by demographic, and found an almost 100,000-fold difference between the youngest and the oldest groups: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2 As such, the "IFR" for a country is going to vary dramatically with the age of the population. It isn't particularly meaningful to talk about IFR as a single number, but it's decidedly true that for anyone under 60, the risk of death is measured in fractions of a percent. For those under 25, the risk is measured in thousandths of a percent.
    - Izkata 5y ago
      Here you go: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33768536/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33768536/ > Acknowledging residual uncertainties, the available evidence suggests average global IFR of ~0.15% and ~1.5-2.0 billion infections by February 2021 with substantial differences in IFR and in infection spread across continents, countries and locations.
      - ajross 5y ago
        Good grief. I don't even have to click on that to know you've misinterpreted or the paper is garbage. We've measured 600k US deaths (with a real count somewhat higher, excess death metrics usually overshoot that by 20-30%)? You'd need 400M+ Americans to even make that work. What's the contention here, magic unmeasured multiple infections? People dying more than once?
- orangecat 5y ago
  Meanwhile flu fatalities cratered due to the pandemic response. That's not at all clear. Different areas have had vastly different levels of response to Covid, but the flu disappeared everywhere. So either minimal levels of non-pharmaceutical interventions are sufficient to virtually eradicate the flu, or something else is going on. Viral interference seems likely: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/31/a-viral-mystery-can-one-infection-prevent-another/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/31/a-viral-mystery-can-one-...
  - ajross 5y ago
    No, it's 100% true. Flu deaths are just data. You can't argue with data. You're engaging in excuse-making to try to rule out the most obvious hypothesis for the enormous drop in deaths. You can't deny that it happened. And while such excuses do exist, they don't represent consensus opinions anywhere. Those who believe them are essentially 1:1 with those who want to believe that covid "is only as bad as the flu", which is provably false.

ajross 5y ago

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html Worst season in recent memory was 61k deaths among influenza patients. Last year saw 600k americans die of covid. Meanwhile flu fatalities cratered due to the pandemic response. Full data isn't available yet, but this site has some details (e.g. pediatric flu deaths dropped between 37x and 199x -- there was ONE child who died of the flu last year): https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm

Izkata 5y ago
> Worst season in recent memory was 61k deaths among influenza patients. Last year saw 600k americans die of covid. Those aren't directly comparable because the various flus have been circulating for years/decades and people have died all across that time. While people do have cross-immunity with sars-cov-2 and other coronaviruses, sars-cov-2 is new so it's hitting those decades of people all at once. The currently estimated IFR across all age groups is around 0.15%, putting it on-par with the flu (something like 0.07% IIRC; this one is hard to pin down because there's a lot of different flus). And in the past few months, cases have spiked without a spike in deaths all over the place, so that 0.15% is probably going to drop more, especially with indications that the Delta variant is more infections but less serious. (That said the effect the past few months could be the effect of the vaccines; it's not clear to me if that's supposed to affect the estimated IFR or that estimation is for a vulnerable population (but I'm not sure how you could estimate a vulnerable population for one that's been around for a while, so I think it does still count))
- ajross 5y ago
  > The currently estimated IFR across all age groups is around 0.15%, putting it on-par with the flu Yeah, that's gonna need one hell of a cite. This is false.
  - timr 5y ago
    The OP correct about best estimates for IFR at a global level, and you shouldn't be dismissing the number out-of-hand. The difficulty with "global average IFR" is that it neglects the massive variation in IFR by age. This Nature paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0 made an attempt to break down the IFR by demographic, and found an almost 100,000-fold difference between the youngest and the oldest groups: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2 As such, the "IFR" for a country is going to vary dramatically with the age of the population. It isn't particularly meaningful to talk about IFR as a single number, but it's decidedly true that for anyone under 60, the risk of death is measured in fractions of a percent. For those under 25, the risk is measured in thousandths of a percent.
  - Izkata 5y ago
    Here you go: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33768536/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33768536/ > Acknowledging residual uncertainties, the available evidence suggests average global IFR of ~0.15% and ~1.5-2.0 billion infections by February 2021 with substantial differences in IFR and in infection spread across continents, countries and locations.
    - ajross 5y ago
      Good grief. I don't even have to click on that to know you've misinterpreted or the paper is garbage. We've measured 600k US deaths (with a real count somewhat higher, excess death metrics usually overshoot that by 20-30%)? You'd need 400M+ Americans to even make that work. What's the contention here, magic unmeasured multiple infections? People dying more than once?
orangecat 5y ago
Meanwhile flu fatalities cratered due to the pandemic response. That's not at all clear. Different areas have had vastly different levels of response to Covid, but the flu disappeared everywhere. So either minimal levels of non-pharmaceutical interventions are sufficient to virtually eradicate the flu, or something else is going on. Viral interference seems likely: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/31/a-viral-mystery-can-one-infection-prevent-another/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/31/a-viral-mystery-can-one-...
- ajross 5y ago
  No, it's 100% true. Flu deaths are just data. You can't argue with data. You're engaging in excuse-making to try to rule out the most obvious hypothesis for the enormous drop in deaths. You can't deny that it happened. And while such excuses do exist, they don't represent consensus opinions anywhere. Those who believe them are essentially 1:1 with those who want to believe that covid "is only as bad as the flu", which is provably false.