The average number of people who die of influenza in the US is about 35,000. So we should expect 350,000 deaths and then we'll be all good?
Don't forget the '17 flu seasons was 65k deaths in the US. So we're at a little under 3x right now. So yes, Covid is worse, but we don't bat an eye at 65k deaths due to the flu.
This is simply not true in general. The vast majority of people who come down with covid have a minor illness, and many of them do not even realise what it was. I have three friends who had positive tests and no symptoms beyond those of the common cold. All of the available data supports this being the normal case, and serious complications being either a rare case of bad luck, or a result of underlying illnesses.
> a good amount of those discharged form hospital are looking at permanently reduced lung function
If you have any respiratory infection serious enough to put you in the hospital, you're probably looking at a longer recovery and possibly at long-term reduced lung function. But the relatively young & healthy mostly don't end up in hospital with covid, just as they don't end up in hospital when they get the flu.
Selecting only the most serious cases (hospital admissions) and talking about their outcomes is not useful for drawing general conclusions about the pandemic or the way countries have chosen to respond to it.
1) Only as long as they are old people. The moment flu kills even a couple children, everybody goes apoplectic.
2) I suspect that one of the takeaways from Covid is going to be that viruses (even flu) cause a lot more long-term damage than we give them credit for. Nobody was funding brain or circulatory scans for flu patients--we're going to get some of that data as a side benefit of all the Covid analysis.
And the flu certainly can cause long-term damage.
"Other possible serious complications triggered by flu can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscle (myositis, rhabdomyolysis) tissues, and multi-organ failure (for example, respiratory and kidney failure). Flu virus infection of the respiratory tract can trigger an extreme inflammatory response in the body and can lead to sepsis, the body’s life-threatening response to infection."[2]
[1]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm [2]https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/symptoms.htm#complications
How can we compare Covid numbers to the flu when the US has gone into lockdown, schools closed, everyone that can is WFH. No concerts or sporting events
totally different circumstances
Sweden might be a more accurate comparison since they didn’t go into full lockdown and it’s at 10x
In the last ten years we (in the US) have lost +500,000 people to the flu.
For some reason the people that died from the flu must be lesser in value because nobody did anything about it.
You would think that a single year of 65k deaths would be enough for everybody to wear masks the following flu season. And yet?
No economic shutdowns. No masks. No restrictions on schools. Literally nothing other than vaccines that mostly don’t work.
How is that an argument for less-drastic measures?
The "with shutdowns, masks and closed schools" line also assumes the effectiveness of all those measures, and ignores the glaring problem that they simply kick the can down the road -- there is no appetite for shutdowns and closed schools until the end of 2021, but a vaccine could easily take that long (if not longer) to be generally available -- assuming any of the current vaccine candidates work well. So what, exactly, is the plan?
For flu you're using sophisticated statistical modelling of excess death combined with community surveillance of use of primary and secondary care. This will tend to overcount.
For covid-19 you're using "died after testing positive for covid, or with covid mentioned as the cause on the death certificate". This will tend to undercount (even when taking into account the slight overcount involved in people who die from other things after a +ve test).
I think this so called Doctor is just trying to push a narrative and links to no research or sources for any of his assumptions or data.
This article has no credibility.
What Covid-19 made me realise is that there are tens of thousands of lives we could be saving each year by adopting some simple behavioural rules that definitely do not need to harm the economy. For example, stay home when you have flu-like symptoms, don't touch your face, wash your hands thoroughly, sneeze into your elbow or a handkerchief and get rid of it immediately and so on. No need for lockdowns or anything- just keep in the front of peoples' minds the fact that diseases can be carried around, are carried around, by people doing normal people things all together in a big place with lots of people.
In fact, I believe I've seen signs advising such measures to curb the spread of disease around the London Underground and I think also the Paris Metró, but I've always, until now, ignored them. When I had flu-like symptoms I've always soldiered on and went to work because that was expected of me and that's what my coleagues also did- and more than once I actually got sick after noticing someone sick at work [1].
Well, no more. Not for me anyway. I had no idea. But now I do.
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[1] And one time I got a real nasty stomach bug after I used the toilets after a coleague who had just recovered from a similar infection. I do always wash my bloody hands after, but it seems he didn't and well, there was one door handle in the loo. Yeeew dude. Yeew.
See "Figur 1" https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/0ad710ef37...
The average YLL for people infected with covid is vastly smaller. You still don't want it, but the actual number is measured in months.
This is one of the worst headlines I've seen recently. The actual study measures years lost only of those that died. By that metric, if I cross the road today and get hit by a bus, the headline would be "crossing the road can cut life span by 40 years or more". There is zero valuable information in that headline.
My only issue with this title is that can- which is wrong and makes the title meaningless. The news is that on average it does cut lifespan of ten years.
Note that's quality-adjusted years of life for people who died with/from/by Covid-19, not of all those infected, because the majority of those infected lose 0 years of life so there's not much information in that metric, either.
So, yes, it does make sense to ask "how many years a person who died of Covid-19 could still enjoy had they not died of Covid-19". Just looking at how many people died of those who were infected simply ignores the fact that many people who die of Covid-19 would otherwise have gone on happily being productive and valuable members of their respective communities - and not shuffling, moaning zombies held together by arcane necromancy, waiting for a gust of wind to disintegrate. After all, while Covid-19 is very dangerous for people over 80, it is also quite dangerous for people over 50 and over 60, and those are ages where many people haven't even retired from their careers.
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[1] Not a direct quote, rather one from memory. I can provide the source if needed, it's a video of an hour-long interview with Ioannidis on youtube.
- 60% of the population get it - the IFR is 0.6% - Everyone who dies loses on average 10 years
it's 60% × 0.6% × 10yr = 0.036yr. That's less than two weeks. How much more are you willing to sacrifice for less than two weeks of lifespan?
“Considering that 70% of those who have died of covid are over 80 years old, quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway. That makes covid a mere blip in terms of its effect on mortality.”
It’s just empirically true that dying at 80 is different from dying at 20 if you’re assessing the impact of a pandemic. I guess it needs to be pointed out that “different” has a distinct meaning from “way less tragic.”
It is surprising to hear someone who is supposed to care about the bodies and minds of people be such a cowboy when it comes to their lives. If it's not a big deal for people over 80 to die because "quite a few [of them] would have died this year anyway", maybe we should stop admitting people over 80 to hospitals and save the costs of their care? Does that really sound like a sensible proposition?
I am reminded of the Italian scientist, Rita Levi-Montalcini who receivead a Nobel prize in physiology of medicine at 77 and continued to work and make contributions well into her last years of life until she died at 103 [1]. Of course there are exceedingly few such exceptional people, but my point is that it is perfectly possible for someone to enjoy many years of a productive life after their 80'th birthday and perhaps we should be doing more to ensure that this is not such a rare occurrence, rather than assuming that all those old fossils are dying anyway and leave them to it because them young 'uns wants to go out dancin' and drinkin'.
After all, most people plan to grow old anyway. How many of us are comfortable with the idea that, in our old age, priority will be given to "the economy", not to mention the very economy we worked our arse off to keep going while we were young? What is this economy anyway, Moloch?
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This is miles from what he says. He is arguing for the adjustment of a statistic. He is arguing that Covid has had a minimal affect on the death rate and even smaller when you adjust for how many of the dead would already have been included in the much larger baseline number of expected annual deaths because they are over 80 and X% of those over 80 die each year even with no Covid.
I’m not even sure I agree with him on this or other arguments but it’s clear he values the life of the elderly. As an ER doctor he probably treats many (and many with Covid) each day. I think he’s earned the benefit of the doubt on valuing life, more than most of us here who treat and save no one.
>> “Considering that 70% of those who have died of covid are over 80 years old, quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway. That makes covid a mere blip in terms of its effect on mortality
My comment:
>> If it's not a big deal for people over 80 to die because "quite a few [of them] would have died this year anyway".
Though I should perhaps not have paraphrased, I believe my comment captures the feeling of the doctor's statement well. Yes, he is making a point about mortality rates. Also, he's making the point that 6,000 people dead is a mere blip on mortality because most of them would be dying anyway. His entire post is a declaration that Covid-19 and the deaths from it are not a big deal because most were very old and on their way out anyway.