6 ms·

Urgent appeal to get flu jab after virus killed more than Covid last winter

42 points by ta8645 3y ago

tungah 3y ago
That's an interesting way of saying that covid killed less people than the flu last winter.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Are the CDC stats still based on "died with covid", or did that change to "died of covid" at some point? Serious question, I stopped paying attention awhile ago.
  - throw9away6 3y ago
    Hospital acquired COVID is a serious problem
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    Died of covid is hard to prove, that’s why the alternative was used in the first place. Only excess mortality really showed the real impact. Of course the deniers continuously moved the goalposts, claiming that the lockdowns themselves caused the excess mortality. This was trivial to disprove by pointing them at countries that locked down early and had no excess mortality. It’s still crazy to me how one group can have a chain of incorrect assertions, but then continue to make new ones without any self awareness.
    - jachriga 3y ago
      > It’s still crazy to me how one group can have a chain of incorrect assertions, but then continue to make new ones without any self awareness. This is the nature of "I have a viewpoint that must be true at all costs." It's why, in the face of extreme evidence to the contrary, they'll go full conspiracy theorist before they'll entertain the idea that their original, unfounded beliefs might be incorrect.
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      Sure but if you apply “died with” to e.g. the common cold it would appear quite deadly, no? It’s an absolutely useless statistic, and the fact that it was used for IFR everywhere I saw early on without massive asterisks is very, very odd. And then it wasn’t replaced by “died of”, it was just obfuscated (on CDC anyway).
      - thebruce87m 3y ago
        What was the alternative? A sub-optimal way of measuring is always preferable to no way.
        thelastparadise 3y ago
        > A sub-optimal way of measuring is always preferable to no way. I question this claim.
        thebruce87m 3y ago
        I can give you an example right now on something I’m working on. I have an algorithm that either gets something correct or it doesn’t. My measurement system is also not infallible and will sometimes give out the wrong data, such that it is not possible to know whether the algorithm got it wrong, or the original data was wrong. We still use the combined error as a KPI since it gives an overall health of the system, even though we cannot know the individual error rates. If the KPI tanks it tells us something is wrong and we can investigate. Could be the algorithm, could be the measurement equipment. It’s not perfect, but not having any KPI would mean we would be completely blind to any problems at all. You will find the world is not perfect and compromises have to be made.
        pfannkuchen 3y ago
        Is the output of your work used to inform the public on a health danger which determines their level of fear and support or opposition to response measures? Obviously something like this is reasonable in some cases. Just because it is reasonable in some cases does not mean it is reasonable in every case. Compromises should not be misleading, let alone extremely misleading.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gardenhedge 3y ago
anyone got a better source?
skymast 3y ago
In America, over the course of the covid crisis, amazingly, Flu cases dropped to almost zero, while covid cases followed an almost exact graphed path to previous flu cases.
- camdat 3y ago
  incorrect: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a7.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a7.htm
  - jachriga 3y ago
    Those sort of arguments are always made in bad faith. Is it surprising that <arbitrary infectious disease> was lower during the pandemic, in the midst of unprecedented lockdowns and mask mandates? Absolutely not. The same goes for any argument that claims that COVID deaths were simply mis-classified to take advantage of special hospital reimbursements, and that people were really just dying of the standard flu. It takes almost no effort to show that the ALL-CAUSE risk of dying in America was excessively high during the pandemic years, which turns their argument from "they're just reclassifying flu deaths" into "there's a global conspiracy to submit extra death certificates for fictional people." [1][2][3][4] [1] Age-adjusted mortality up to 2018 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/mortality-trends/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/mortality-trends...) [2] Age-adjusted mortality for 2019 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-08-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-08-508.pdf) [3] Age-adjusted mortality for 2020-2021 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db456.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db456.pdf) [4] Provisional age-adjusted mortality for 2022 (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm) And for easy consumption of that data: https://imgur.com/a/zFYICrt https://imgur.com/a/zFYICrt
- lakhim 3y ago
  No. Covid 2020-2022 absolutely blew seasonal influenza out of the water. Flu came back winter of 2022 but was still vastly outnumbered about three to one. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2022-2023/NCHS38.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2022-2023/NCHS3...

42 points by ta8645 3y ago

tungah 3y ago

That's an interesting way of saying that covid killed less people than the flu last winter.

pfannkuchen 3y ago
Are the CDC stats still based on "died with covid", or did that change to "died of covid" at some point? Serious question, I stopped paying attention awhile ago.
- throw9away6 3y ago
  Hospital acquired COVID is a serious problem
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  Died of covid is hard to prove, that’s why the alternative was used in the first place. Only excess mortality really showed the real impact. Of course the deniers continuously moved the goalposts, claiming that the lockdowns themselves caused the excess mortality. This was trivial to disprove by pointing them at countries that locked down early and had no excess mortality. It’s still crazy to me how one group can have a chain of incorrect assertions, but then continue to make new ones without any self awareness.
  - jachriga 3y ago
    > It’s still crazy to me how one group can have a chain of incorrect assertions, but then continue to make new ones without any self awareness. This is the nature of "I have a viewpoint that must be true at all costs." It's why, in the face of extreme evidence to the contrary, they'll go full conspiracy theorist before they'll entertain the idea that their original, unfounded beliefs might be incorrect.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    Sure but if you apply “died with” to e.g. the common cold it would appear quite deadly, no? It’s an absolutely useless statistic, and the fact that it was used for IFR everywhere I saw early on without massive asterisks is very, very odd. And then it wasn’t replaced by “died of”, it was just obfuscated (on CDC anyway).
    - thebruce87m 3y ago
      What was the alternative? A sub-optimal way of measuring is always preferable to no way.
      - thelastparadise 3y ago
        > A sub-optimal way of measuring is always preferable to no way. I question this claim.
        thebruce87m 3y ago
        I can give you an example right now on something I’m working on. I have an algorithm that either gets something correct or it doesn’t. My measurement system is also not infallible and will sometimes give out the wrong data, such that it is not possible to know whether the algorithm got it wrong, or the original data was wrong. We still use the combined error as a KPI since it gives an overall health of the system, even though we cannot know the individual error rates. If the KPI tanks it tells us something is wrong and we can investigate. Could be the algorithm, could be the measurement equipment. It’s not perfect, but not having any KPI would mean we would be completely blind to any problems at all. You will find the world is not perfect and compromises have to be made.
        pfannkuchen 3y ago
        Is the output of your work used to inform the public on a health danger which determines their level of fear and support or opposition to response measures? Obviously something like this is reasonable in some cases. Just because it is reasonable in some cases does not mean it is reasonable in every case. Compromises should not be misleading, let alone extremely misleading.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gardenhedge 3y ago

anyone got a better source?

skymast 3y ago

In America, over the course of the covid crisis, amazingly, Flu cases dropped to almost zero, while covid cases followed an almost exact graphed path to previous flu cases.

camdat 3y ago
incorrect: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a7.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7015a7.htm
- jachriga 3y ago
  Those sort of arguments are always made in bad faith. Is it surprising that <arbitrary infectious disease> was lower during the pandemic, in the midst of unprecedented lockdowns and mask mandates? Absolutely not. The same goes for any argument that claims that COVID deaths were simply mis-classified to take advantage of special hospital reimbursements, and that people were really just dying of the standard flu. It takes almost no effort to show that the ALL-CAUSE risk of dying in America was excessively high during the pandemic years, which turns their argument from "they're just reclassifying flu deaths" into "there's a global conspiracy to submit extra death certificates for fictional people." [1][2][3][4] [1] Age-adjusted mortality up to 2018 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/mortality-trends/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/mortality-trends...) [2] Age-adjusted mortality for 2019 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-08-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-08-508.pdf) [3] Age-adjusted mortality for 2020-2021 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db456.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db456.pdf) [4] Provisional age-adjusted mortality for 2022 (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm) And for easy consumption of that data: https://imgur.com/a/zFYICrt https://imgur.com/a/zFYICrt
lakhim 3y ago
No. Covid 2020-2022 absolutely blew seasonal influenza out of the water. Flu came back winter of 2022 but was still vastly outnumbered about three to one. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2022-2023/NCHS38.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2022-2023/NCHS3...