Live data from Hacker News

Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

blogs.scientificamerican.com

171–180 of 183 posts

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the point of wearing masks then?

* masks! Not balls. lol

I've edited your comment above to turn the balls back into masks.

(Masked balls, anyone? https://www.google.com/search?q=%22masked+balls%22&tbm=isch)

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I have yet to see posed is "How would society be experiencing the common flu if it had never existed before and this is the first time it jumps to humans?" The first year you see an airborne transmissible disease is likely to be the worst regardless of the disease. The big problem I see is that we're comparing the common flu in its herd immunity steady state to the coronavirus in its first year. Once cor…

A case of deadly flu with little population resistance would like the Spanish flu pandemic. Yes, I would say that the an extraordinary reaction would be entirely appropriate.

At this point, the disease becoming endemic is all but guaranteed, so we're just delaying the inevitable at great economic cost. The best case scenario is to ride the healthcare system capacity threshold while getting the economy moving again so there aren't excess deaths beyond those that would have been claimed sooner or later.

The people arguing for waiting for a vaccine simply don't understand how long that likely to take. It's an unreasonable expectation to keep the world shut down until a vaccine is available as it will cause far more damage than the virus is liable to cause.

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago's lockdown may not be very effective. For instance, per https://www.apple.com/covid19/mobility/ , there's a way smaller decrease in movement than, say, London or Paris.

> say, London or Paris. am I looking at this wrong? transit decrease is London - 85% Paris - 86% Chicago - 77%

Look at cars and walking.

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#174
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you find a single source anywhere that modeled or even causally expected 10 to 30 million deaths without lockdown? Edit: can’t reply directly, but I’d like to see something more than an alarmist article from March 8th. Maybe a recent study? Maybe ANY projection that supports the claim? On March 8th we didn’t know most people that get it will remain asymptomatic.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/public-health-expert-warn... If you expect 60% of the world to get it and it has a 1% fatality rate that's 46.8 million deaths. edit:Professor Gabriel Leung, chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, is an expert on coronavirus epidemics and played a key role during the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003. It wasn't an alarmist article, it's an article about a projection b…

> at this point I don't think you're going to accept anything

Oh, no, don’t make that mistake. I am definitely open minded. I can no more predict the future than you.

I just want to confirm you think that there will be 10-30 million Covid19 deaths this year based on a projection a guy made on March 8th and then taking the worst/peak week of covid and extrapolating that out.

That is your position, correct?

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#175
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/public-health-expert-warn... If you expect 60% of the world to get it and it has a 1% fatality rate that's 46.8 million deaths. edit:Professor Gabriel Leung, chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, is an expert on coronavirus epidemics and played a key role during the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003. It wasn't an alarmist article, it's an article about a projection b…

> at this point I don't think you're going to accept anything Oh, no, don’t make that mistake. I am definitely open minded. I can no more predict the future than you. I just want to confirm you think that there will be 10-30 million Covid19 deaths this year based on a projection a guy made on March 8th and then taking the worst/peak week of covid and extrapolating that out. That is your position, correct?

It really doesn't matter what my position is. I'm nobody. I've looked at what people who do have actual knowledge on the subject and formed my opinion on the matter, but my opinion is quite literally not relevant to anyone but myself.

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, and it's being done. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/27/upshot/corona... > The recent death count reached six times the normal number of deaths for the city at this time of year, a surge in deaths much larger than what could be attributed to normal seasonal variations from influenza, heart disease or other more common causes. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... >…

One question I have is how many of these excess deaths is due to coronavirus and how many are due to our response to coronavirus since people are not getting their regular health care. For example, my dad has congestive heart failure and sees his doctor once a month and gets an EKG every time. I've been in appointments and the majority of the discussion centers around changes in his EKGs from the previous months. Rig…

People are huddling inside in fear of Covid-19. How many of these excess deaths are caused by fright and the stress thereof?

"Can You Die from Fear? The Baskerville Effect"

https://www.drmirkin.com/histories-and-mysteries/the-baskerv...

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK about half the excess deaths don't mention COVID at all on the death certificate. Of those that do, a very high proportion are extremely old, i.e. they died with the disease rather than of it. If you take that into account the lockdown kills far more healthy people than COVID.

Germany is in lockdown and seeing no excess deaths (covid or otherwise). The whole of Italy is in lockdown, but areas badly affected by covid are seeing much more more unexplained excess death than other less affected areas. It seems to me that lock-down is very unlikely to be the thing that is killing people.

Germans haven't been told repeatedly they have a patriotic duty to avoid hospitals to save their national treasure.

The British numbers are public and speak for themselves. ER attendance halved. Cardiac patients halved. People stopped going to hospitals when they needed to - luckily Germany avoided socialised healthcare and hospitals are just seen as normal companies.

As for Italy, there have been similar problems there with elderly homes in particular and hospitals struggling with staffing sure to lockdowns and isolation.

Ultimately this is the same virus everywhere. It doesn't look like it though. So differences in national performances are telling us a lot of important things about how governments have reacted.

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One question I have is how many of these excess deaths is due to coronavirus and how many are due to our response to coronavirus since people are not getting their regular health care. For example, my dad has congestive heart failure and sees his doctor once a month and gets an EKG every time. I've been in appointments and the majority of the discussion centers around changes in his EKGs from the previous months. Rig…

In the UK about half the excess deaths don't mention COVID at all on the death certificate. Of those that do, a very high proportion are extremely old, i.e. they died with the disease rather than of it. If you take that into account the lockdown kills far more healthy people than COVID.

Where are you getting your UK stats from please?

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#179
post #130
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pneumonia is a common fatal complication of influenza, and I think there's reasonably good statistical evidence that the cases counted towards flu deaths are mostly caused by the flu especially in the bad flu epidemic years which are most comparable to Covid-19. That sentence is a bit like claiming that people don't die from falling out of airplanes because the actual cause of death was hitting the ground.

I think you meant 'flu deaths are mostly caused by [bacterial] pneumonia'. One thought along those lines is that the spike in deaths we see is due to covid19 killing directly, death coming like clockwork X weeks after infection. Compared to the flu, which due to the requirement for a secondary bacterial pneumonia, has a higher variability in the timing of the death: at what time bacterial infection develops, which st…

Yeah, and apparently one of the more interesting consequences of this is that people don't necessarily have detectable flu virus anymore once they're hospitalized with pneumonia because it's the bacteria allowed in by the now-gone flu infection that's killing them.

Re: Comparing Covid-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One question I have is how many of these excess deaths is due to coronavirus and how many are due to our response to coronavirus since people are not getting their regular health care. For example, my dad has congestive heart failure and sees his doctor once a month and gets an EKG every time. I've been in appointments and the majority of the discussion centers around changes in his EKGs from the previous months. Rig…

People are huddling inside in fear of Covid-19. How many of these excess deaths are caused by fright and the stress thereof? "Can You Die from Fear? The Baskerville Effect" https://www.drmirkin.com/histories-and-mysteries/the-baskerv...

And there's an opposite effect. Way fewer people are dying or being hurt by car crashes. Normally one of the leading causes of death in the "prime of life" age range. And even more weird, deaths and injuries for young people are way down as impulsive risk taking and peacocking are reigned in. So weird all the indirect effects.
Post reply on HN