8 ms·

Bit by bit, it is becoming the new influenza. Not saying we're there yet, but that's clearly where we're headed. Now, influenza kills lots of people; in 2018

Bit by bit, it is becoming the new influenza. Not saying we're there yet, but that's clearly where we're headed. Now, influenza kills lots of people; in 2018 over 60,000 people were killed by influenza in the USA alone. But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza, and we're not going to.

Kranar 4y ago
2018 was an exceptionally bad year for influenza. Typically influenza deaths in the U.S. are between 20-30k. COVID deaths in the U.S. over a two year period amounted to over 1 million.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- lifeformed 4y ago
  And that's with tons of precautions, whereas with the flu society doesn't take the kinds of mitigations we take with COVID.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - homonculus1 4y ago
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    People stopped taking special precautions for COVID six months ago in most of Europe. As soon as most of the population was vaccinated, it was pretty much over. Also, in my country, a lot of people got Omicron - and I mean a lot - realised it didn’t do much and pretty much stoped worrying.
    - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
      - michaelmrose 4y ago
        All masks that keep some of your spit in your mouth decreases viral transmission where the chance of transmission is linearly related to the number of potentially infectious particles in the environments
- slibhb 4y ago
  Sure but as immunity (natural and otherwise) becomes common, deaths from covid are way down. It seems likely that covid will end up looking something like the flu: a seasonal virus with significant costs but not warranting lockdowns or mandates.
- antasvara 4y ago
  I think the commenter you're responding to was indicating that we're moving towards COVID as the new influenza, not that we're there yet. Case numbers and deaths seem to be plateauing at a pretty low rate, especially considering the relaxed restrictions these numbers are occurring under. It seems reasonable to think that we won't suddenly see a more dangerous strain of this particular virus, or that vaccines will lose a significant amount of effectiveness.
- rossdavidh 4y ago
  This chart from CDC shows deaths from all causes: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm It still (just barely) shows part of the 2018 influenza spike, which is pretty similar to where we were at in July (note that the last few weeks on this chart are likely to come up a bit, but from what I've seen they don't rise much once they're 2-3 weeks old). Now it's always possible that the winter will be just like 2020/21 and 2021/22 winters, in terms of deaths, but I highly doubt it. Anyone who has not either been infected or vaccinated (or both) by now, is almost certainly naturally resistant. There isn't much of an "immunologically naive" population left. Where we are now is analogous to influenza in 1920, just after the big flupandemic of 1918/19.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    People are getting regularly re-infected and sustaining progressive damage with substantially increasing risks of cardiovascular damage.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    You're making some very big claims here, especially has repeated infection by the same strain of Covid (nevermind differing strains) has been demonstrated to occur.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  You know what else was a bad year for influenza? 1918. Look up how many deaths occurred in the 2-year 1918-1919 period.
- wsc981 4y ago
  I kinda wonder what the number of influenza deaths was in the last 2 years.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    There'll be statistics on influenza deaths, depends on the jurisdiction you're interested in.
    - wsc981 4y ago
      I found these graphs: https://www.familiesfightingflu.org/flu-deaths-vs-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.familiesfightingflu.org/flu-deaths-vs-covid-19-d... It's remarkable how few people died from flu the last 2 years. I know people were (probably still are) being tested for COVID when visiting the hospital. Do we test for flu? I also feel COVID deaths are overblown, should probably be much lower in these graphs (many people that died /with/ COVID have been marked as dying /from/ COVID).
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  The 1 million number is not accurate over those two years. We know it isn't accurate because we know that large numbers were merely covid positive when they died (often using an inaccurate testing method) Providing perverse funding incentives to hospitals distorts the data
  - ratg13 4y ago
    All you have to do is look at a chart of excess deaths to disprove this.
    - upsidesinclude 4y ago
      And how is that number derived? Do you have any idea how the calculations are performed to arrive at that number? I suggest you take some time to investigate. When we are talking about the US, in particular, the whole pandemic has been politicized
      - EdwardDiego 4y ago
        The hint is in the word "excess". If there's a pandemic, and concurrently the amount of deaths in a population increases, there's a strong argument for correlation. Excess deaths doesn't care what your cause of death was, it just compares deaths in period X to deaths in previous periods. > When we are talking about the US, in particular, the whole pandemic has been politicized Yeah, it was very sad to see the Republicans and Trump in particular pursue that course of action.
        upsidesinclude 4y ago
        You seem to want to keep your blinders on. The population is growing and hence the number dying is also growing. The way you handle the data to determine what is considered 'excess' changes the value. Actuarial science has been used to make that determination in more recent studies. Those studies suggest that the 'excess' number used by politicians and in news media is not accurate. Actuarial science used by insurance companies now shows historic changes in occurrence of deaths, over this period of time, that are not caused by SarsCoV2. Again, I suggest you investigate where the information comes from that you consider to support you base assumptions.
- reissbaker 4y ago
  That's a two-year period that doesn't include mass vaccination, and includes now-effectively-eliminated strains that were significantly more deadly than the current Omicron-based ones.
monksy 4y ago
Covid has a total of 1 million kills in two years (In the US). Excessive deaths puts that even higher.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Excess deaths are partially due to the official reactions to COVID, but disintangling the two is probably impossible.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Aside from obvious egregious examples such as sending Covid infected patients back to rest homes in New York State, what other aspects of official reaction do you consider contributed? Genuine question.
gffrd 4y ago
> But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza Now wait a second … that's not a bad idea!
ribosometronome 4y ago
>But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza Except for when we do shut things down. It's far from without precedent for the government to mandate personal safety requirements, tho. Seatbelt laws for cars are near universal in the US and that's a much more only-effects-you decision compared to vaccination.
- yucky 4y ago
  When have we shut things down for the flu? Or did you mean something else? Also, seatbelts are removable which people would say makes that comparison irrelevant.
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago
belltaco 4y ago
>But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza, and we're not going to. We do have "show your papers" for influenza. For example: https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-9 https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-...
- eloisant 4y ago
  So you can get a visa, a green card, and live many years in the US without any proof of vaccination, but if you want citizenship THEN you need a proof of vaccine? That's weird.
  - lovich 4y ago
    You need your vaccination papers if you’re getting your green card as well, although I agree that it should probably be a visa requirement if we wanted to be serious about it
Gibbon1 4y ago
Because it infects cells with the ACE2 receptor covid is never going to be the new influenza. It's going to kill 100-200,000 people a year in the US indefinitely.
- dekhn 4y ago
  I don't think any responsible medical researcher would claim this. We honestly don't know what the longer term implications of annual COVID are, and the distribution of deaths strongly suggests that the population of people who would die from covid in the US already did, and the remaining population (with the exception of people entering the risk profile) is not as susceptible to extremely bad outcomes.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    This is unconscionable. Most groups considered at risk had less than a 10% mortality risk ergo almost all of them are still alive albeit potentially damaged and actually at higher risk.
- purpleblue 4y ago
  Covid IFR is below the flu now, after everyone has become vaccinated and after omicron swept through and infected most of the US.
  - Gibbon1 4y ago
    Covid is killing about 150,000 people a year where influenza averages about 30,000. So no.
    - purpleblue 4y ago
      IFR means "infection fatality rate". The operative word is rate. So no, you are completely wrong. You are comparing number of deaths as opposed to rate of death per infection. The number of COVID infections are orders of magnitude higher than the number of flu infections. The rate of death from COVID per infection is now lower than the flu. https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc59b https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc...
2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
> Bit by bit, it is becoming the new influenza. Not saying we're there yet, but that's clearly where we're headed. Unless long COVID turns out to be a real and serious thing...
- MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
  It is real in that virus infections can have long-term consequences. This is not new and has been known for a long time, and this of course can happen with COVID too. It is not real insofar one assumes COVID is special or particularly more dangerous in this regard. It isn’t, except for temporary loss of smell and reduced aerobic capacity. Also see https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/how-unreal-is-long-covid https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/how-unreal-is-long-covid
  - nope96 4y ago
    > It is not real ... The posters on https://www.reddit.com/r/covidlonghaulers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/covidlonghaulers/ would disagree with you
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      The posters on r/the_donald with disagree with you about the 2020 election being stolen too... a subreddit's fringe opinion doesn't move the needle on what is factual. Echo chamber, filter bubble, etc etc
  - panda-giddiness 4y ago
    > It is not real insofar one assumes COVID is special or particularly more dangerous in this regard. /cue accidental rap battle Well obviously; that's a tautology. The question is how it actually differs per epidemiology.
- 988747 4y ago
  I thought that long COVID was proven to be a mental disorder, not anything physical? That's why even people who were never infected with COVID experience it.
nikolay 4y ago
Even with the "low" death numbers right now (averaging between 400 and 500 people a day), it is still times worse than the worst flu epidemic in recent decades! Nevertheless, they will not be that low in the months from October to March, so this would be 4-5 times the worst flu with an epidemic "under control"! However, what if the virus reinvents the high mortality of SARS or MERS combined with being the second most contagious virus known to science? Again, this is nowhere close to the flu and far from over!
- throwaway1777 4y ago
  4-5 times worse than flu is fine. If it mutates to be more deadly like sars we would obviously change strategies and need a new vaccine for that.
  - nikolay 4y ago
    Not exactly - there's enough data that each infection accumulates damage. This is not the flu and you're not back to where you were before the COVID-19 episode.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Influenza was significantly more lethal before the 50s.
      - nikolay 4y ago
        So, we have 30 years to wait until SARS-CoV-2 becomes like the flu?
    - Lumbolol 4y ago
      Each time you catch the flu you also accumulate damage. Same with every disease. Just because you feel back to normal after getting over an illness it doesn't mean there isn't a permanent hit taken in terms of future repair & recovery capacity. I suppose the argument is that Covid-19 causes more long term damage in many people when compared to other similar illnesses? That's interesting, but part of me wonders if this is just a false flag due to how much research there is going into covid.
kseistrup 4y ago
Hasn't the pandemic also taught us that we don't need to accept so many deaths by influenza? I mean, here in Denmark influenza almost vanished because we started using hand sanitizer and facemasks.
- Wolfenstein98k 4y ago
  And locked down and limited immigration.
- switch007 4y ago
  Many citations needed
  - kseistrup 4y ago
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35361789/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35361789/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32339092/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32339092/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29402-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29402-5
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      Haha, nice, many citations given :D
    - switch007 4y ago
      > ... travel restrictions, quarantine on arrival, social distancing, school and workplace closures, mask wearing, surface disinfection, and enhanced hand hygiene So to eliminate influenza we just need to destroy the economy, restrict travel, force people to pay $1000s in quarantine, cover our faces and close schools and office. And ignore all the negative consequences of that. Got it. Your comment "almost vanished because we started using hand sanitizer and facemasks." is false. It was much more than that. EDIT: and your links prove a reduction in influenza, yes, not "taught us that we don't need to accept so many deaths by influenza". That's a much wider debate and involves much more than scientific studies
michaelmrose 4y ago
We change strategies based on the expected cost/benefit of different strategies. The expected cost of covid is much higher than the flu and may be much higher for decades. We are basically never fully getting back to normal unless the cost of spreading your sneeze around gets back to where it was in 2019. Instead we are looking at plentiful deaths and accumulating damage courtesy of even mild infections. We aren't actually going back.
that_guy_iain 4y ago
I thought it was clear as day this was where it was heading. The fact the virus mutates so often made it clear that herd immunity to wipe it out wasn't possible. And that it mutates so much made it clear that we would need constant booster shots, and it isn't really viable to keep giving everyone one while paying drug companies tons of money for it. For me, the only thing I care about is if I need to wear a mask and if I need to have a vaccination to do things. If I need to have a vaccination pass to do things then I don't think we should be getting charged for getting it. And I just hate wearing masks.
EdwardDiego 4y ago
> Bit by bit, it is becoming the new influenza. Not saying we're there yet, but that's clearly where we're headed. That's what we're hoping for - and it's generally the trajectory novel viruses take - come out of the gates with a bang and a whallop into a vulnerable population, eventually tone down as people build immunity and selective pressures favour mutations that don't dramatically and fearfully kill their victims. > But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza We very much did when H1N1 killed millions from 1918 to 1920. Closing the borders, lockdowns, quarantines etc. Not so much "show your proof of vaccination" due to well, you know, there not being a vaccine for influenza then. However, you might find this illuminating - a 1905 Supreme Court decision upholding the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. [0] > and we're not going to. If a novel strain of influenza were to emerge that current vaccines can't handle, and it was proving to be highly efficient at causing severe illness or death, you really don't think similar preventive measures would be taken? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jzb 4y ago
tl;dr - COVID and Influenza may have similarities, but the comparison is premature, faulty, and doesn't reflect the actual threat of COVID as we understand it currently. At this point I'm no longer asking people to change their behavior, it's pointless. However, the very least you can do is not be dismissive of people who are still being cautious. Comments about "show your papers" are bullshit. We had an opportunity to prevent this from becoming a pandemic, and once it became a pandemic we could've worked together to limit spread and protect one another. Instead we had a large chunk of society that decided letting COVID burn through millions of victims was preferable to wearing a mask or not having parties. -- CDC says the 2018-2019 Flu season killed about 28K people, hospitalized 375K people. The vast majority of those were in the 65+ age group. (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html) The 2017-2018 season estimate was 61K, the 2019-2020 estimate was 22K, prior years from 2010 through 2017 were as high as 51,000 and as low as 12,000. The U.S. is averaging 400-500 deaths from COVID per day. If you split the difference and call it 450, that's more than 160,000 per year. Note that COVID numbers are probably shaky given that we have states like Florida trying to block reporting, and inaccuracies in reporting since COVID deaths may be misreported (e.g. someone recently "recovered" from COVID dies of stroke or heart attack that may be linked to COVID but the person isn't tested for COVID or isn't currently testing positive but the death is likely a result of COVID). So, our averages are far higher than Flu and that doesn't even take into account deaths we aren't counting as COVID. The excess deaths reported from March 2020 - March 2022 were 15% higher than reported COVID deaths. We also have no evidence of "long-flu" the way we're seeing complications of COVID infections long past the initial sickness. And we don't yet know if we've reached a plateau or if we have more mutations/waves in front of us that will spike numbers. Or, maybe we are seeing the tail end and we'll stay at current numbers or decline further. Several experts are predicting a fall surge - which may or may not happen, and may or may not be severe. Like Flu, yes, many people now have some exposure and/or have been vaccinated -- so COVID is less "novel" and may keep declining in severity, but given lax attitudes towards masking and vaccinations/boosters and other precautions, we'll see more sickness and death than we need to. Anecdotally: Between March 2020 and March 2022 I knew maybe two people in my immediate circle of friends and family (about 30 people) who tested positive for COVID, and two who likely had COVID but didn't get a positive test. The two likely cases were prior to vaccine availability and one of the couple works in health care and had no real way to isolate and avoid exposures. Happily, none of them died or were hospitalized. Since March of this year my immediate family (4 people) and my wife's brother & his wife (who's pregnant and being super-cautious) are the only people I know who haven't tested positive for COVID at least once. Most of my co-workers have had it. While, again, no one has required hospitalization or has died, the reported symptoms & after-effects often are higher in severity with a case of the flu. We're talking weeks long "brain fog" and loss of smell/taste, shortness of breath, and so forth in several cases. (To be fair, some cases have been mild - usually spouse or children of someone who's been sicker, but tested positive after exposure.)
stjohnswarts 4y ago
I think it's no replacing influenza, just taking a spot at the table, no? Influenza isn't going anywhere and COVID-19 still kills at something like 4x the rate of influenza even with the new more “moderate” strains. That's nothing to sneeze at. Also, there's no sign of “long influenza” like there is with Covid-19. It has ruined many people's lives, making them unable to work/live like they used to.

Kranar 4y ago

2018 was an exceptionally bad year for influenza. Typically influenza deaths in the U.S. are between 20-30k. COVID deaths in the U.S. over a two year period amounted to over 1 million.

sieabahlpark 4y ago
lifeformed 4y ago
And that's with tons of precautions, whereas with the flu society doesn't take the kinds of mitigations we take with COVID.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- homonculus1 4y ago
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  People stopped taking special precautions for COVID six months ago in most of Europe. As soon as most of the population was vaccinated, it was pretty much over. Also, in my country, a lot of people got Omicron - and I mean a lot - realised it didn’t do much and pretty much stoped worrying.
  - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      All masks that keep some of your spit in your mouth decreases viral transmission where the chance of transmission is linearly related to the number of potentially infectious particles in the environments
slibhb 4y ago
Sure but as immunity (natural and otherwise) becomes common, deaths from covid are way down. It seems likely that covid will end up looking something like the flu: a seasonal virus with significant costs but not warranting lockdowns or mandates.
antasvara 4y ago
I think the commenter you're responding to was indicating that we're moving towards COVID as the new influenza, not that we're there yet. Case numbers and deaths seem to be plateauing at a pretty low rate, especially considering the relaxed restrictions these numbers are occurring under. It seems reasonable to think that we won't suddenly see a more dangerous strain of this particular virus, or that vaccines will lose a significant amount of effectiveness.
rossdavidh 4y ago
This chart from CDC shows deaths from all causes: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm It still (just barely) shows part of the 2018 influenza spike, which is pretty similar to where we were at in July (note that the last few weeks on this chart are likely to come up a bit, but from what I've seen they don't rise much once they're 2-3 weeks old). Now it's always possible that the winter will be just like 2020/21 and 2021/22 winters, in terms of deaths, but I highly doubt it. Anyone who has not either been infected or vaccinated (or both) by now, is almost certainly naturally resistant. There isn't much of an "immunologically naive" population left. Where we are now is analogous to influenza in 1920, just after the big flupandemic of 1918/19.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  People are getting regularly re-infected and sustaining progressive damage with substantially increasing risks of cardiovascular damage.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  You're making some very big claims here, especially has repeated infection by the same strain of Covid (nevermind differing strains) has been demonstrated to occur.
antisthenes 4y ago
You know what else was a bad year for influenza? 1918. Look up how many deaths occurred in the 2-year 1918-1919 period.
wsc981 4y ago
I kinda wonder what the number of influenza deaths was in the last 2 years.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  There'll be statistics on influenza deaths, depends on the jurisdiction you're interested in.
  - wsc981 4y ago
    I found these graphs: https://www.familiesfightingflu.org/flu-deaths-vs-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.familiesfightingflu.org/flu-deaths-vs-covid-19-d... It's remarkable how few people died from flu the last 2 years. I know people were (probably still are) being tested for COVID when visiting the hospital. Do we test for flu? I also feel COVID deaths are overblown, should probably be much lower in these graphs (many people that died /with/ COVID have been marked as dying /from/ COVID).
upsidesinclude 4y ago
The 1 million number is not accurate over those two years. We know it isn't accurate because we know that large numbers were merely covid positive when they died (often using an inaccurate testing method) Providing perverse funding incentives to hospitals distorts the data
- ratg13 4y ago
  All you have to do is look at a chart of excess deaths to disprove this.
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    And how is that number derived? Do you have any idea how the calculations are performed to arrive at that number? I suggest you take some time to investigate. When we are talking about the US, in particular, the whole pandemic has been politicized
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      The hint is in the word "excess". If there's a pandemic, and concurrently the amount of deaths in a population increases, there's a strong argument for correlation. Excess deaths doesn't care what your cause of death was, it just compares deaths in period X to deaths in previous periods. > When we are talking about the US, in particular, the whole pandemic has been politicized Yeah, it was very sad to see the Republicans and Trump in particular pursue that course of action.
      - upsidesinclude 4y ago
        You seem to want to keep your blinders on. The population is growing and hence the number dying is also growing. The way you handle the data to determine what is considered 'excess' changes the value. Actuarial science has been used to make that determination in more recent studies. Those studies suggest that the 'excess' number used by politicians and in news media is not accurate. Actuarial science used by insurance companies now shows historic changes in occurrence of deaths, over this period of time, that are not caused by SarsCoV2. Again, I suggest you investigate where the information comes from that you consider to support you base assumptions.
reissbaker 4y ago
That's a two-year period that doesn't include mass vaccination, and includes now-effectively-eliminated strains that were significantly more deadly than the current Omicron-based ones.

monksy 4y ago

Covid has a total of 1 million kills in two years (In the US). Excessive deaths puts that even higher.

concordDance 4y ago
Excess deaths are partially due to the official reactions to COVID, but disintangling the two is probably impossible.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  Aside from obvious egregious examples such as sending Covid infected patients back to rest homes in New York State, what other aspects of official reaction do you consider contributed? Genuine question.

gffrd 4y ago

> But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza Now wait a second … that's not a bad idea!

ribosometronome 4y ago

>But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza Except for when we do shut things down. It's far from without precedent for the government to mandate personal safety requirements, tho. Seatbelt laws for cars are near universal in the US and that's a much more only-effects-you decision compared to vaccination.

yucky 4y ago
When have we shut things down for the flu? Or did you mean something else? Also, seatbelts are removable which people would say makes that comparison irrelevant.
OrvalWintermute 4y ago

belltaco 4y ago

>But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza, and we're not going to. We do have "show your papers" for influenza. For example: https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-9 https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-...

eloisant 4y ago
So you can get a visa, a green card, and live many years in the US without any proof of vaccination, but if you want citizenship THEN you need a proof of vaccine? That's weird.
- lovich 4y ago
  You need your vaccination papers if you’re getting your green card as well, although I agree that it should probably be a visa requirement if we wanted to be serious about it

Gibbon1 4y ago

Because it infects cells with the ACE2 receptor covid is never going to be the new influenza. It's going to kill 100-200,000 people a year in the US indefinitely.

dekhn 4y ago
I don't think any responsible medical researcher would claim this. We honestly don't know what the longer term implications of annual COVID are, and the distribution of deaths strongly suggests that the population of people who would die from covid in the US already did, and the remaining population (with the exception of people entering the risk profile) is not as susceptible to extremely bad outcomes.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  This is unconscionable. Most groups considered at risk had less than a 10% mortality risk ergo almost all of them are still alive albeit potentially damaged and actually at higher risk.
purpleblue 4y ago
Covid IFR is below the flu now, after everyone has become vaccinated and after omicron swept through and infected most of the US.
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  Covid is killing about 150,000 people a year where influenza averages about 30,000. So no.
  - purpleblue 4y ago
    IFR means "infection fatality rate". The operative word is rate. So no, you are completely wrong. You are comparing number of deaths as opposed to rate of death per infection. The number of COVID infections are orders of magnitude higher than the number of flu infections. The rate of death from COVID per infection is now lower than the flu. https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc59b https://www.ft.com/content/e26c93a0-90e7-4dec-a796-3e25e94bc...

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago

> Bit by bit, it is becoming the new influenza. Not saying we're there yet, but that's clearly where we're headed. Unless long COVID turns out to be a real and serious thing...

MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
It is real in that virus infections can have long-term consequences. This is not new and has been known for a long time, and this of course can happen with COVID too. It is not real insofar one assumes COVID is special or particularly more dangerous in this regard. It isn’t, except for temporary loss of smell and reduced aerobic capacity. Also see https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/how-unreal-is-long-covid https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/how-unreal-is-long-covid
- nope96 4y ago
  > It is not real ... The posters on https://www.reddit.com/r/covidlonghaulers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/covidlonghaulers/ would disagree with you
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    The posters on r/the_donald with disagree with you about the 2020 election being stolen too... a subreddit's fringe opinion doesn't move the needle on what is factual. Echo chamber, filter bubble, etc etc
- panda-giddiness 4y ago
  > It is not real insofar one assumes COVID is special or particularly more dangerous in this regard. /cue accidental rap battle Well obviously; that's a tautology. The question is how it actually differs per epidemiology.
988747 4y ago
I thought that long COVID was proven to be a mental disorder, not anything physical? That's why even people who were never infected with COVID experience it.

nikolay 4y ago

Even with the "low" death numbers right now (averaging between 400 and 500 people a day), it is still times worse than the worst flu epidemic in recent decades! Nevertheless, they will not be that low in the months from October to March, so this would be 4-5 times the worst flu with an epidemic "under control"! However, what if the virus reinvents the high mortality of SARS or MERS combined with being the second most contagious virus known to science? Again, this is nowhere close to the flu and far from over!

throwaway1777 4y ago
4-5 times worse than flu is fine. If it mutates to be more deadly like sars we would obviously change strategies and need a new vaccine for that.
- nikolay 4y ago
  Not exactly - there's enough data that each infection accumulates damage. This is not the flu and you're not back to where you were before the COVID-19 episode.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Influenza was significantly more lethal before the 50s.
    - nikolay 4y ago
      So, we have 30 years to wait until SARS-CoV-2 becomes like the flu?
  - Lumbolol 4y ago
    Each time you catch the flu you also accumulate damage. Same with every disease. Just because you feel back to normal after getting over an illness it doesn't mean there isn't a permanent hit taken in terms of future repair & recovery capacity. I suppose the argument is that Covid-19 causes more long term damage in many people when compared to other similar illnesses? That's interesting, but part of me wonders if this is just a false flag due to how much research there is going into covid.

kseistrup 4y ago

Hasn't the pandemic also taught us that we don't need to accept so many deaths by influenza? I mean, here in Denmark influenza almost vanished because we started using hand sanitizer and facemasks.

Wolfenstein98k 4y ago
And locked down and limited immigration.
switch007 4y ago
Many citations needed
- kseistrup 4y ago
  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35361789/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35361789/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32339092/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32339092/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29402-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29402-5
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Haha, nice, many citations given :D
  - switch007 4y ago
    > ... travel restrictions, quarantine on arrival, social distancing, school and workplace closures, mask wearing, surface disinfection, and enhanced hand hygiene So to eliminate influenza we just need to destroy the economy, restrict travel, force people to pay $1000s in quarantine, cover our faces and close schools and office. And ignore all the negative consequences of that. Got it. Your comment "almost vanished because we started using hand sanitizer and facemasks." is false. It was much more than that. EDIT: and your links prove a reduction in influenza, yes, not "taught us that we don't need to accept so many deaths by influenza". That's a much wider debate and involves much more than scientific studies

michaelmrose 4y ago

We change strategies based on the expected cost/benefit of different strategies. The expected cost of covid is much higher than the flu and may be much higher for decades. We are basically never fully getting back to normal unless the cost of spreading your sneeze around gets back to where it was in 2019. Instead we are looking at plentiful deaths and accumulating damage courtesy of even mild infections. We aren't actually going back.

that_guy_iain 4y ago

I thought it was clear as day this was where it was heading. The fact the virus mutates so often made it clear that herd immunity to wipe it out wasn't possible. And that it mutates so much made it clear that we would need constant booster shots, and it isn't really viable to keep giving everyone one while paying drug companies tons of money for it. For me, the only thing I care about is if I need to wear a mask and if I need to have a vaccination to do things. If I need to have a vaccination pass to do things then I don't think we should be getting charged for getting it. And I just hate wearing masks.

EdwardDiego 4y ago

> Bit by bit, it is becoming the new influenza. Not saying we're there yet, but that's clearly where we're headed. That's what we're hoping for - and it's generally the trajectory novel viruses take - come out of the gates with a bang and a whallop into a vulnerable population, eventually tone down as people build immunity and selective pressures favour mutations that don't dramatically and fearfully kill their victims. > But we don't have border closing or "show your papers" or all the rest for influenza We very much did when H1N1 killed millions from 1918 to 1920. Closing the borders, lockdowns, quarantines etc. Not so much "show your proof of vaccination" due to well, you know, there not being a vaccine for influenza then. However, you might find this illuminating - a 1905 Supreme Court decision upholding the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. [0] > and we're not going to. If a novel strain of influenza were to emerge that current vaccines can't handle, and it was proving to be highly efficient at causing severe illness or death, you really don't think similar preventive measures would be taken? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts

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jzb 4y ago

tl;dr - COVID and Influenza may have similarities, but the comparison is premature, faulty, and doesn't reflect the actual threat of COVID as we understand it currently. At this point I'm no longer asking people to change their behavior, it's pointless. However, the very least you can do is not be dismissive of people who are still being cautious. Comments about "show your papers" are bullshit. We had an opportunity to prevent this from becoming a pandemic, and once it became a pandemic we could've worked together to limit spread and protect one another. Instead we had a large chunk of society that decided letting COVID burn through millions of victims was preferable to wearing a mask or not having parties. -- CDC says the 2018-2019 Flu season killed about 28K people, hospitalized 375K people. The vast majority of those were in the 65+ age group. (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html) The 2017-2018 season estimate was 61K, the 2019-2020 estimate was 22K, prior years from 2010 through 2017 were as high as 51,000 and as low as 12,000. The U.S. is averaging 400-500 deaths from COVID per day. If you split the difference and call it 450, that's more than 160,000 per year. Note that COVID numbers are probably shaky given that we have states like Florida trying to block reporting, and inaccuracies in reporting since COVID deaths may be misreported (e.g. someone recently "recovered" from COVID dies of stroke or heart attack that may be linked to COVID but the person isn't tested for COVID or isn't currently testing positive but the death is likely a result of COVID). So, our averages are far higher than Flu and that doesn't even take into account deaths we aren't counting as COVID. The excess deaths reported from March 2020 - March 2022 were 15% higher than reported COVID deaths. We also have no evidence of "long-flu" the way we're seeing complications of COVID infections long past the initial sickness. And we don't yet know if we've reached a plateau or if we have more mutations/waves in front of us that will spike numbers. Or, maybe we are seeing the tail end and we'll stay at current numbers or decline further. Several experts are predicting a fall surge - which may or may not happen, and may or may not be severe. Like Flu, yes, many people now have some exposure and/or have been vaccinated -- so COVID is less "novel" and may keep declining in severity, but given lax attitudes towards masking and vaccinations/boosters and other precautions, we'll see more sickness and death than we need to. Anecdotally: Between March 2020 and March 2022 I knew maybe two people in my immediate circle of friends and family (about 30 people) who tested positive for COVID, and two who likely had COVID but didn't get a positive test. The two likely cases were prior to vaccine availability and one of the couple works in health care and had no real way to isolate and avoid exposures. Happily, none of them died or were hospitalized. Since March of this year my immediate family (4 people) and my wife's brother & his wife (who's pregnant and being super-cautious) are the only people I know who haven't tested positive for COVID at least once. Most of my co-workers have had it. While, again, no one has required hospitalization or has died, the reported symptoms & after-effects often are higher in severity with a case of the flu. We're talking weeks long "brain fog" and loss of smell/taste, shortness of breath, and so forth in several cases. (To be fair, some cases have been mild - usually spouse or children of someone who's been sicker, but tested positive after exposure.)

stjohnswarts 4y ago

I think it's no replacing influenza, just taking a spot at the table, no? Influenza isn't going anywhere and COVID-19 still kills at something like 4x the rate of influenza even with the new more “moderate” strains. That's nothing to sneeze at. Also, there's no sign of “long influenza” like there is with Covid-19. It has ruined many people's lives, making them unable to work/live like they used to.