Coronavirus (Covid-19) compares with flu as a cause of death | Hacker News Reader

Coronavirus (Covid-19) compares with flu as a cause of death

ons.gov.uk

5 pointsDanBC6 comments

It seems like they're doing a bit of sleight of hand. They combine the flu and pneumonia into the same bucket, and count how many times either word appears on the death certificate vs. the same for COVID-19.

COVID can cause pneumonia. Obviously it can't cause the flu. To combine them into the same bucket seems odd, in that it vastly over-counts the number of deaths it's implying are due to the flu.

I came to post precisely the same thing. Many pathogens cause pneumonia, and many elderly die from it as an end of life cause of death similar to heart failure. The fact not once did they break our flu - a specific type of virus - and pneumonia - a catch all for inflamed lungs - makes me suspect they’re stretching the stats to make some point not supported by the data.

They also distinguish between covid / flu and pneumonia cause of death and contribution to death. Whereas cause of death covid is reportedly 4x more likely, contribution they’re roughly at parity. But this one is where pneumonia being included gets really iffy. Pneumonia is extremely common as the body shuts down and often helps hasten death in a favorable way. It should be expected to find signs of pneumonia in people at end of life.

The flu vs covid is the meaningful benchmark and this is hogwash IMO.

Yes, that's exactly the point they're making. A lot of people get pneumonia, it's a very common cause of death, we see it on very many death certificates. And, even though it's so common, we still see very many more (between 4x and 32x) deaths caused by covid.

The other reason they're combining flu and pneumonia is because that's in the method that Public Health England used / Health Security Agency use for flu surveillance: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20140714084...

The title may have been editorialised: the article's headline is "How coronavirus (COVID-19) compares with flu as a cause of death" and its summary does not suggest it compares with flu.

I believe that, for whatever reason, "How" is automatically removed from the beginning of submitted titles.

Yeah, I haven't even read it, but the title editing is wrong. If there's not enough space for "How" then better to remove "coronavirus" instead to avoid changing the meaning. Or change "compares with flu" to "compared to flu"

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