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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

> My understanding is that most evidence points to order of magnitude more lethal even when the hospitals aren't overflown.

If those mortality estimates were based on the number of positive test cases, then they're very likely overblown. Recent seralogical studies indicate that the number of positive test results are likely a small fraction of the total number of cases, and likely the most severe subset at that. None of this is to say that it's less lethal than influenza, only that the situation is developing rapidly and any given mortality estimate may well be outdated.

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Well UK deaths from flu are about were 500 deaths per 66M for the most recent year of published cause of death statistics, which I understand (from a couple of papers on annual infection rates) represents about 500/13M infections.

Covid19 figures in the UK are 26,000 [hospital] deaths for 165,000 confirmed infections. Even if we assume the entire population is infected ... that makes it a minimum of 10x as deadly as flu. We're at a slowly falling ~5000 deaths per day; when care-home and other Covid deaths get added ...

I think perhaps you're down-playing it a little too much.

To reiterate the third/last sentence of my post, I'm explicitly not down-playing anything--I'm not asserting anything about covid WRT the flu, only cautioning against drawing conclusions based on potentially outdated information.

In any case, we can all agree that regardless of the value of the number, its "way too many fatalities". My family has lost several colleagues/classmates already. This did not happen in other years. This year is very different, and concerning.

I'm terribly sorry for your losses. It's an awful disease, and loss of life is terrible. It is indeed concerning, but if we can understand whether these fatalities are due to high morbidity or "simply" because it is highly contagious, we can make better decisions about treating the disease, setting policy, etc which can all drive down the amount of suffering and death. That's perhaps a small consolation to those who have lost friends and family already. :'(

> Recent seralogical studies indicate that the number of positive test results are likely a small fraction of the total number of cases

No: the antibody tests were done with the expectation that the total number of the infected would be much higher. The tests have such false positive rates that with the results actually observed the tests in most of the cases say nothing -- in most of the locations the numbers would be similar even if nobody would be a real positive. And there where the results are above these "noise" thresholds we also have a big numbers of deaths which do confirm my claim of order of magnitude deadlier than flu.

Even observing the pure death statistics we can see that, even in spite of all the measures actively taken throughout the world. Without them it's obvious it would have been again the difference of some orders of magnitude:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

See also here:

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

the "Death rates have climbed far above historical averages" graph.

Going by the death rates, it's definitely deadlier than any flu of the past five years, but not by a magnitude. Not even close.

Saying that it would've been a magnitude higher without any of the measures is pure speculation.

So? I haven't read any of this studies either, but I'd expect seralogical studies to likewise indicate that positive flu test results are a small fraction of the total number of cases, and likely the most severe subset.

We have decades of data about the flu--we pretty much understand its morbidity. We don't need to make guesses based on positive test results like we were doing with covid.

Your argument is invalid.

My understanding is that the current estimated IFR from those studies (NY specially) is between 0.6% and 1.2%. I think flu is around 0.1% (however I am not sure if that is the CFR or the IFR). The second factor to consider is the attack rate, how many people are likely to get infected. For flu is around between 10% to 15% of the total population, while for Covid it is, potentially, larger than 80% (no natural immunity and no vaccines). It is however unlikely that it will reach that level given the current containment and mitigation measures. But if it reaches something like 40% (double of the latest NY estimate), it will mean covid is between 16 to 48 times deadlier than the flu.

I believe 0.1% is the CFR for the flu, and the IFR is close to 0.04%?

IFR for flu is less than 0.1% according to the CDC.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

That's not the IFR since they're not counting asymptomatic cases (based on a quick read)

They don't mention IFR anywhere as far as I can see

Thanks. I have seen serious estimates of 0.1% CFR for the 1957 and 1964 flu pandemics, but only notes saying that the seasonal flu CFR is <0.1%. Do you have a source for the 0.04% IFR?

No (hence the question mark), I'm seeing 0.04% pop up everywhere but I haven't found the source for the number.

But it seems plausible if the CFR is <0.1% as there are both asymptomatic cases of the flu and people don't always go to the doctor even if they have symptoms. It seems like caring about IFR was rare before this pandemic and the lockdown

Got it. Thanks. I think it may be because the IFR is less reliable, since for most diseases it requires a gross estimation the real number of infected persons. It is probably more popular these days because people are putting a lot of effort into the comparisons with the seasonal flu.

Yes, sorry, I thought we were comparing IFR and not CFR.

No worries, I had made the same mistake. I just wanted to point out that the attack rate is also part of the fatality equation, and it is commonly not taken into account.

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