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This article immediately claims that the Asian Flu in question was far deadlier than COVID. This is categorically false. In fact, it's not even close. The ar

This article immediately claims that the Asian Flu in question was far deadlier than COVID. This is categorically false. In fact, it's not even close. The article claims 116k US deaths attributable to the Asian flu. Meanwhile, there were 10x that number of excess US deaths during the COVID pandemic. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid As others have pointed out, the AIER is a conservative think-tank. I don't know where they're getting their casualty numbers from, but it's not from any reputable source. This is clearly biased garbage. Edit: COVID directly caused 1.1 million verified deaths in the USA. We were second in the world in COVID deaths as a percentage of the population. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Thoeu388 3y ago
> Excess mortality....the number of deaths *from all causes* during a crisis My friend killed himself because of lockdown. I guess he is a covid victim. Very convinient.
- somewhat_drunk 3y ago
  Unless you believe that 90% of the excess deaths were not directly related to COVID, your implied point falls flat. Edit: There were 1.1 million COVID deaths in the USA alone. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
  - Thoeu388 3y ago
    We still have excess deaths in year 2023. Birth rates are 15% lower. New diabetes 30% higher...
    - esotericimpl 3y ago
      [dead]
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      I'm sorry about your friend. It's shameful that you're being silenced on HN for mentioning this.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    About half of the excess (in the US) isn’t attributed to COVID in OECD datasets. Pink is total; orange is COVID; blue is non-COVID attributed excess. https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/mortality/covid-mortality-comparison.png https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/mortality/covid-mortality-...
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Over the span of 3 years. To put this in perspective a typical flu year claims ~40K people each year. So Covid over this time span killed about 10X as many people as a typical flu year. If you told people "hey, this year the flu is going to be very bad, probably killing 10 times as many people" would the average response be to close schools and many businesses for over a year? Or would the response be to limit lockdowns to vulnerable populations, rather than blanket lockdowns on most of society?
    - Kbelicius 3y ago
      So what you are saying is that it was known how many people will be killed by covid-19 before any measures have been put in to affect and that those measures had no influence on the number of those who died? If not, what is the point of your post?
      - Manuel_D 3y ago
        Before March, sure no we did not. But by mid-late 2020, yes we did. But lockdowns continued well into 2021. We had studies to determine the infection fatality rates in mid-late 2020: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7947934/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7947934/ Ionnadis was slammed for claiming such a low IFR of 0.27%. But later studies have since reaffirmed his estimates: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9613797/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9613797/ Even when restricting the analysis to the period before vaccinations, the IFR was between 0.3% and 0.4%. Ionnadis was way closer to the mark than the claims of 1.0 or 1.5% IFR that were common at the time.
    - marcinzm 3y ago
      If hospitals said "we're about to run out of room and stop treating everyone" then I would go with whatever prevents that scenario. edit: COVID placed a 20x burden on hospitals versus the flu even with lockdowns. That's without counting the increased difficulty of treating a novel disease, and increased time in hospitals for covid vs flu.
      - 3y ago
knodi123 3y ago
[flagged]
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  Well if they lie so readily and deeply, debunk their arguments themselves. It shouldn't be difficult. It's tiresome to see constant dismissals of points of views based on an obsession with bias. Bias is inherent to most organizations and people, so weight of argument and its evidence is what should count. Going on about the GOP doesn't help either, it shuts down debate dishonestly and ignores the simple fact that many sources from the left of the spectrum are no less capable of dishonest arguments, lies and forcing through their views, complexities be damned. edit: Also, there's nothing inherently evil or nasty about this organization having the views it does. Their being divergent from progressive liberal views, such as those espoused by many organizations with a left bias, doesn't make them shitty per se.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but their bias isn’t just their ideology, the article itself is just false with bad math. They claim at the beginning the avian flu was more severe and wave hands at population growth to explain how 1.13m deaths in a 331m population is less severe than 0.116 deaths in a 159m population. No where do they quote the covid death toll, nor the actual populations at the time. This is presumably because they intend to mislead their readers with an overt falsehood. That is lying, and lends credence to such a stark bias they’re willing to directly lie to deceive their readers into believing their points. These were essentially the only actual facts quoted in the entire article. That sorta makes them shitty.
Manuel_D 3y ago
So Ebola virus is not as deadly as COVID because fewer people have died from it? "Deadlier" can mean a whole host of things: infection fatality rate of a disease can be far higher even if the total deatg toll is lower, if fewer people contract the disease.
- orwin 3y ago
  > So Ebola virus is not as deadly as COVID because fewer people have died from it? Yes? That's the definition, no? Cows are deadlier than sharks, cars are deadlier than planes, even though you're more likely to survive a cow attack or a car crash?
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Which is deadlier, being shot in the head with a .50 cal, or catching the flu? The former is much deadlier - it's basically guaranteed death - but the latter is so much more frequent that it claims more lives even though the vast majority of people survive it. Usually "deadlier" refers to the chances a given event will kill you if it happens, not normalized for the frequency of those events. The flu most certainly claims more lives, but I doubt most people would agree with the sentence, "being shot in the head is less deadly than the flu."
    - orwin 3y ago
      But now you're comparing individual outcomes to population outcomes. Yes, getting shot in the head is deadlier than (catching) the spanish flu. But the Spanish flu was deadlier than firearms/WW1. That's often the limit of analogies.
      - fnordpiglet 3y ago
        Sorry I think you’re confusing “deadlier” with “more death,” deadliness is a measure of likelihood of dying when exposed to the situation. Something can be much less deadly yet more people are exposed to the situation and it causes more death. Ebola is undoubtedly more deadly than covid. But it’s much less virulent, partially because it is so deadly. There’s no super spreading symptom free stuff going on with Ebola. Just death.
RansomStark 3y ago
You are comparing those numbers directly, but that's not how you compare those numbers. First the population size, as per the article, was half what it is now. So you can either double the asian flu deaths or half the covid deaths to account for this. That still leaves a huge gap, but this is where demographic analysis comes in. Usually you see this as age adjusted deaths. In this case, the population of the US has been aging for a long time so you would expect more deaths from covid than the Asian flu for an equally deadly virus. The other demographic change that is important, especially when talking about covid is rates of obesity, which is something else that has grown over time in the US population. That's a really long winded way to say you can't just compare raw numbers. The article doesn't give an explanation of how they came to their conclusion, but if you take population size, age distribution, and obesity rates into account, I could see the adjusted numbers being close.
- Thoeu388 3y ago
  [flagged]
- simonster 3y ago
  Yes, there are more obese and elderly people now than there were in 1957. No, we can't "adjust" death numbers to place less weight on the deaths of those obese and elderly people in this context. Perhaps it would make some sense to do so if our goal was to measure virulence of the virus, but policy decisions have to take into account the composition of the population as it is today.
- somewhat_drunk 3y ago
  >if you take population size, age distribution, and obesity rates into account, I could see the adjusted numbers being close. Those are confounding factors, but I think it's quite a stretch to believe they would provide a 5x adjustment (after accounting for 2x population), especially if you also adjust for the drastically improved quality of and access to healthcare, which would skew the adjustment in the other direction.
  - heyjamesknight 3y ago
liquidgecka 3y ago
> We were second in the world in COVID deaths as a percentage of the population. I am not trying to change your argument in anyway but that specific statement is not correct or its using different numbers than direct COVID deaths. The US is 15th. Peru was #1, and EU members Hungary (#3), Croatia (#6), Slovakia (#10), Greece (#13) and Romania (#14) are all ahead of us. (Sorry I am pedantic about covid numbers) =)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- somewhat_drunk 3y ago
  Thank you for the correction! I see now that the full dataset is available in the table at the bottom of the page. I was referring to the chart at the top of the page, which (for some reason) leaves out the 14 countries between Peru and the USA. I wish they wouldn't do that.

Thoeu388 3y ago

> Excess mortality....the number of deaths *from all causes* during a crisis My friend killed himself because of lockdown. I guess he is a covid victim. Very convinient.

somewhat_drunk 3y ago
Unless you believe that 90% of the excess deaths were not directly related to COVID, your implied point falls flat. Edit: There were 1.1 million COVID deaths in the USA alone. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
- Thoeu388 3y ago
  We still have excess deaths in year 2023. Birth rates are 15% lower. New diabetes 30% higher...
  - esotericimpl 3y ago
    [dead]
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    I'm sorry about your friend. It's shameful that you're being silenced on HN for mentioning this.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  About half of the excess (in the US) isn’t attributed to COVID in OECD datasets. Pink is total; orange is COVID; blue is non-COVID attributed excess. https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/mortality/covid-mortality-comparison.png https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/mortality/covid-mortality-...
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Over the span of 3 years. To put this in perspective a typical flu year claims ~40K people each year. So Covid over this time span killed about 10X as many people as a typical flu year. If you told people "hey, this year the flu is going to be very bad, probably killing 10 times as many people" would the average response be to close schools and many businesses for over a year? Or would the response be to limit lockdowns to vulnerable populations, rather than blanket lockdowns on most of society?
  - Kbelicius 3y ago
    So what you are saying is that it was known how many people will be killed by covid-19 before any measures have been put in to affect and that those measures had no influence on the number of those who died? If not, what is the point of your post?
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      Before March, sure no we did not. But by mid-late 2020, yes we did. But lockdowns continued well into 2021. We had studies to determine the infection fatality rates in mid-late 2020: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7947934/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7947934/ Ionnadis was slammed for claiming such a low IFR of 0.27%. But later studies have since reaffirmed his estimates: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9613797/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9613797/ Even when restricting the analysis to the period before vaccinations, the IFR was between 0.3% and 0.4%. Ionnadis was way closer to the mark than the claims of 1.0 or 1.5% IFR that were common at the time.
  - marcinzm 3y ago
    If hospitals said "we're about to run out of room and stop treating everyone" then I would go with whatever prevents that scenario. edit: COVID placed a 20x burden on hospitals versus the flu even with lockdowns. That's without counting the increased difficulty of treating a novel disease, and increased time in hospitals for covid vs flu.
    - 3y ago

knodi123 3y ago

[flagged]

southernplaces7 3y ago
Well if they lie so readily and deeply, debunk their arguments themselves. It shouldn't be difficult. It's tiresome to see constant dismissals of points of views based on an obsession with bias. Bias is inherent to most organizations and people, so weight of argument and its evidence is what should count. Going on about the GOP doesn't help either, it shuts down debate dishonestly and ignores the simple fact that many sources from the left of the spectrum are no less capable of dishonest arguments, lies and forcing through their views, complexities be damned. edit: Also, there's nothing inherently evil or nasty about this organization having the views it does. Their being divergent from progressive liberal views, such as those espoused by many organizations with a left bias, doesn't make them shitty per se.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but their bias isn’t just their ideology, the article itself is just false with bad math. They claim at the beginning the avian flu was more severe and wave hands at population growth to explain how 1.13m deaths in a 331m population is less severe than 0.116 deaths in a 159m population. No where do they quote the covid death toll, nor the actual populations at the time. This is presumably because they intend to mislead their readers with an overt falsehood. That is lying, and lends credence to such a stark bias they’re willing to directly lie to deceive their readers into believing their points. These were essentially the only actual facts quoted in the entire article. That sorta makes them shitty.

Manuel_D 3y ago

So Ebola virus is not as deadly as COVID because fewer people have died from it? "Deadlier" can mean a whole host of things: infection fatality rate of a disease can be far higher even if the total deatg toll is lower, if fewer people contract the disease.

orwin 3y ago
> So Ebola virus is not as deadly as COVID because fewer people have died from it? Yes? That's the definition, no? Cows are deadlier than sharks, cars are deadlier than planes, even though you're more likely to survive a cow attack or a car crash?
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Which is deadlier, being shot in the head with a .50 cal, or catching the flu? The former is much deadlier - it's basically guaranteed death - but the latter is so much more frequent that it claims more lives even though the vast majority of people survive it. Usually "deadlier" refers to the chances a given event will kill you if it happens, not normalized for the frequency of those events. The flu most certainly claims more lives, but I doubt most people would agree with the sentence, "being shot in the head is less deadly than the flu."
  - orwin 3y ago
    But now you're comparing individual outcomes to population outcomes. Yes, getting shot in the head is deadlier than (catching) the spanish flu. But the Spanish flu was deadlier than firearms/WW1. That's often the limit of analogies.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      Sorry I think you’re confusing “deadlier” with “more death,” deadliness is a measure of likelihood of dying when exposed to the situation. Something can be much less deadly yet more people are exposed to the situation and it causes more death. Ebola is undoubtedly more deadly than covid. But it’s much less virulent, partially because it is so deadly. There’s no super spreading symptom free stuff going on with Ebola. Just death.

RansomStark 3y ago

You are comparing those numbers directly, but that's not how you compare those numbers. First the population size, as per the article, was half what it is now. So you can either double the asian flu deaths or half the covid deaths to account for this. That still leaves a huge gap, but this is where demographic analysis comes in. Usually you see this as age adjusted deaths. In this case, the population of the US has been aging for a long time so you would expect more deaths from covid than the Asian flu for an equally deadly virus. The other demographic change that is important, especially when talking about covid is rates of obesity, which is something else that has grown over time in the US population. That's a really long winded way to say you can't just compare raw numbers. The article doesn't give an explanation of how they came to their conclusion, but if you take population size, age distribution, and obesity rates into account, I could see the adjusted numbers being close.

Thoeu388 3y ago
[flagged]
simonster 3y ago
Yes, there are more obese and elderly people now than there were in 1957. No, we can't "adjust" death numbers to place less weight on the deaths of those obese and elderly people in this context. Perhaps it would make some sense to do so if our goal was to measure virulence of the virus, but policy decisions have to take into account the composition of the population as it is today.
somewhat_drunk 3y ago
>if you take population size, age distribution, and obesity rates into account, I could see the adjusted numbers being close. Those are confounding factors, but I think it's quite a stretch to believe they would provide a 5x adjustment (after accounting for 2x population), especially if you also adjust for the drastically improved quality of and access to healthcare, which would skew the adjustment in the other direction.
- heyjamesknight 3y ago

liquidgecka 3y ago

> We were second in the world in COVID deaths as a percentage of the population. I am not trying to change your argument in anyway but that specific statement is not correct or its using different numbers than direct COVID deaths. The US is 15th. Peru was #1, and EU members Hungary (#3), Croatia (#6), Slovakia (#10), Greece (#13) and Romania (#14) are all ahead of us. (Sorry I am pedantic about covid numbers) =)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
somewhat_drunk 3y ago
Thank you for the correction! I see now that the full dataset is available in the table at the bottom of the page. I was referring to the chart at the top of the page, which (for some reason) leaves out the 14 countries between Peru and the USA. I wish they wouldn't do that.