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Comment by madballster | Hacker News Reader

Many of the "Covid-19 increases risk of XYZ" popular media articles lack baseline comparisons to other virus infections. (Disclaimer: Yes, we know Covid-19 isn't the flu, and it's more deadly.) My point is: how much does heart-disease risk increase post-Covid compared to say post-Influenza? Is it comparable or is the risk magnitudes larger than with other virus infections? This is an important benchmark, I understand scientific journals don't cater to laypeople but popular media does.

From CDC website: "Studies have shown that flu illness is associated with an increase in heart attacks and stroke. A 2018 study found that the risk of having a heart attack was 6 times higher within a week of a confirmed flu infection."

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> Yes, we know Covid-19 isn't the flu, and it's more deadly.

This isn't a true statement. It depends on the age group. Flu is far more deadly to young children whereas COVID rarely even results in a cold in younger children.

But to your point, basically any infection that causes systemic inflammation can increase heart disease risk. Even the common cold is dangerous for people at high risk of heart disease.

The CDC reports 16.3 flu/pneumonia deaths per 100,000 [0]. That's 0.0163 percent.

Johns Hopkins University reports covid-19 has 278.89 deaths per 100,000 - a 1.2% mortality rate in the US [1].

That would put covid-19 at 278.89/16.3 = ~17 times more deadly than the flu. Just because the numbers don't hold for a particular age group doesn't make the aggregate statement false. In fact, it would be misleading to categorize "17 times more deadly" as anything other than "more deadly."

Edit: I made a mistake dividing the percentages the first go around, reporting covid-19 as 73 times more deadly than influenza. I have updated the 3rd paragraph to show the calculations directly.

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm

[1]: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

That is misinformation. The actual COVID-19 infection fatality rate calculated by the CDC is 0.6%, not 1.2%.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

So only ~36x more deadly!

The JHU site that’s linked is reporting case fatality rates, not infection fatality rates

It’s also not estimating case under-reporting like CDC is

I think jumping straight to misinformation is a bit strong here, but it’s important to make fair comparisons and discuss the context of the stats along with the raw numbers

The only study that I've seen compare Covid-19 to the flu is one related to long-covid. You can have long-covid-like symptoms after the flu, but it is about twice more likely with Covid-19 than with the flu.

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

I guess there are others, I just didn't randomly stumbled across them.

That is depressing to read. Wont Covid19 cannibalize on other coronaviruses' "market share"?

It's taken most of flu's market share the last couple of years. On the plus side it may spur us to improve air quality like we improved water quality a century or two ago.

Think a study should consider duration of symptoms as well as how often they occur.

I have had post-viral symptoms after flu a few years ago and long-covid now. Recovery after flu was about 6 months, I'm coming up to two years with long-covid.

It's best to remeber that even if covid was in all aspects identical to flu, it will not replace flu. We'll have covid and flu. So even in the best case scenario (which isn't real) we are facing doubling of dmg from seasonal flu.

Well, it has somewhat replaced flu the last couple of years. That might be largely attributable to lockdowns, though.

Given that different variants of the same virus outcompete each other (very evident with Covid), why would that not apply to different viruses of similar nature? SARS-CoV2 and Influenza both effectively compete for the same vulnerable population, and abide similar epidemiological dynamics. There is also some level of cross-immunity for corona viruses.

Influenza is not a coronavirus. There is no cross-immunity.

My guess is that the reason why we've seen a drop in cases of Flu during the Covid pandemic is strictly related to lockdowns and Flu being less infectious than Covid. In other words, the lockdowns were very effective against Flu.

Different strains of Covid compete with each other because antibodies that block one version are very effective at blocking another. If you've recently had Omicron, your body is well prepared to fight off Delta.

If you've already had the flu, your body might have some level of preparedness against a Covid variant, but it's nowhere near the same level. Plenty of people who died from Covid had already experienced the flu at some point in their life. Covid variants compete with each other far more than they do with flu variants.

Covid is caused by a "corona virus".

The Flu is caused by the "influenza virus".

So even though they are both contagious respiratory illnesses, they are caused by completely different viruses.

The reason we've seen far fewer influenza cases these past 2 years isn't related to the 2 viruses out competing eachother.

It's much more likely that the pandemic measures we've had in place, over most of the world, like social distancing, mask wearing, lockdowns, closed borders, etc., has had a greater impact on the flu, because it isn't as contagious as covid.

When we remove the pandemic measures, we're probably going to see the usual flu numbers again.

Maybe even worse than normal, for the first couple of seasons. Since we haven't been as exposed to the flu for 2 years.

they're not identical but they're also not totally independent. There is a certain percentage of the population that is very vulnerable to both illnesses, yet they can't die twice.

> A 2018 study found that the risk of having a heart attack was 6 times higher within a week of a confirmed flu infection."

Within a week seems trivially small to the point of irrelevance. That would be when they are still sick with the flu, no?

Yeah, a lot of these viruses seem to do damage to the heart. I saw this study recently [1] about the flu vaccine reducing mortality in those with cardiovascular disease and I wonder if it would apply more generally in reducing risk of CVD in those who don’t have it?

1. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.120.019636

That would significantly reduce the fear and who would want that?

Same goes in the other direction, the sniffles can also cause myocarditis.

Here's a preprint by some of the same authors as the main article. Figure 5 compares to influenza:

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1062160/v1 Long Covid after Breakthrough COVID-19: the post-acute sequelae of breakthrough COVID-19 by Ziyad Al-Aly, Benjamin Bowe, Yan Xie

Figure 5 is "Risk and 6-month excess burden of post-acute sequelae by organ system in people who were hospitalized during the acute phase of breakthrough COVID-19 compared to those hospitalized with seasonal influenza "

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