71–80 of 119 posts
I'm just not convinced the comparison is very meaningful, as I suspect many more people were tested for Covid-19 than for influenza. The testing strategy may have been completely different, making the comparison meaningless.
I think it is important to keep in mind that Covid-19 is still contained to some extent due to various measures. The influenza numbers are for the most part without any behaviour changes or rules (the influenza season ended roughly when Covid started to spread). The Covid-19 deaths would be higher if it were able to spread unhindered through the entire population. And even in this somewhat unfair comparison Covid cau…
Influenza is contained because there is some form of herd immunity already. Remember COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus, which is why it's spread so much so fast, no one is immune at first. But to suggest that the covid death numbers will be this high year after year after year is unlikely in my opinion, as is shown by the fact that many places with big first waves (north italy, sweden, london) don't have a second wave…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The influenza season in the UK is typically October-May with the peak period December-March. So the 2020 number for influenza is a bit flawed given that it's missing 25% of the typical peak period and 3/8 of the whole influenza season.
The numbers for Jan-Aug don't include December for any previous year, so there's no flaw there.
To be clear: the flaw doesn't flip my interpretation of the results or anything, but it's still a glaring flaw that doesn't seem to be addressed in the article.
This is pretty damming to anyone who claims "its just the flu": “More than three times as many deaths were recorded between January and August this year where COVID-19 was the underlying cause compared to influenza and pneumonia." “The mortality rate for COVID-19 is also significantly higher than influenza and pneumonia rates for both 2020 and the five-year average." “Since 1959, which is when ONS monthly death recor…
This chart from Sweden says its not worse than influenza: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ejd0IpdVcAASTqR?format=jpg&name=... Looking at the source data, the numbers seem roughly right: https://knoema.de/atlas/Schweden/Sterblichkeitsrate I don't know what to think anymore.
Are there instances of hospitals corridors turning into morgues in recent years due to Influenza? If Covid-19 is not worse than the Influenza we should have similar impact due to influenza. I was not able to confirm that Influenza creates similar strain to healthcare infrastructure as Covid-19 which makes me think that the Covid-19 situation in Sweden is more nuanced than the numbers say.
Edit: HN doesn't let me post more comments atm, so here is my reply to "needs citations":
They "need" citations? Why do they need them, because it is my duty to convince you? Why?
If you are interested, you can ask if I have citations, or you can google yourself. But there is no "need" as such, because it is not my duty to convince you.
These things made the rounds at the high time early in the pandemic. Maybe if I have time I'll google them later. Maybe you could google for "Morgues closing corona" or something like that.
New York especially afaik has a problem with Morgues, even in normal times there are not enough of them, and it is not easy to build more because of regulations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It’s also contained because unleashing it would totally overwhelm almost any nation’s hospitals, cause a cascading death toll because no treatment could be given. This is clearly not true because it didn't overwhelm Sweden's hospitals, or Japan's, or South Dakota's, even though they didn't have lockdowns, just voluntary social distancing.
Well it probably depends on the amount of IC beds / ventilators / trained personnel available per location. I know that here in The Netherlands they narrowly avoided a triage situation where your condition decided if were going to get treated. A second order effect that might not be obvious is that during the first wave a lot of non-emergency procedures were postponed, a lot of these non-emergency procedures can stil…
Apart from some bad mistakes in the beginning where the infection was allowed to spread in care facilities Sweden has weathered the epidemic (as in the local version of the pandemic) no worse than surrounding countries and certainly no worse than e.g. New York.
I think it is important to keep in mind that Covid-19 is still contained to some extent due to various measures. The influenza numbers are for the most part without any behaviour changes or rules (the influenza season ended roughly when Covid started to spread). The Covid-19 deaths would be higher if it were able to spread unhindered through the entire population. And even in this somewhat unfair comparison Covid cau…
It's, also, important to keep in mind that Influenza has a vaccination, which is very cheap and many elderly people take it. Yet, many die from it (and it doesn't make any headlines). We are at the end just comparing apples to oranges. It would be really interesting to make such comparisons if we hadn't any vaccination for Influenza.
Basically Influenza is endemic and the deaths are evenly distributed over long periods of time, whereas a novel virus will obviously have a huge initial death count in year 1, but subsequent years will see equally many less deaths logically.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there instances of hospitals corridors turning into morgues in recent years due to Influenza? If Covid-19 is not worse than the Influenza we should have similar impact due to influenza. I was not able to confirm that Influenza creates similar strain to healthcare infrastructure as Covid-19 which makes me think that the Covid-19 situation in Sweden is more nuanced than the numbers say.
Afaik such things happen, although I don't know about Sweden. But many reports that induced panic were just things that happen from time to time, only the population was not used to seeing it (no reporting). There were other aspects, too, like morgues closing out of fear or because of regulation (can't handle the dead because of risk of infection). Edit: HN doesn't let me post more comments atm, so here is my reply t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It’s also contained because unleashing it would totally overwhelm almost any nation’s hospitals, cause a cascading death toll because no treatment could be given. This is clearly not true because it didn't overwhelm Sweden's hospitals, or Japan's, or South Dakota's, even though they didn't have lockdowns, just voluntary social distancing.
Well it probably depends on the amount of IC beds / ventilators / trained personnel available per location. I know that here in The Netherlands they narrowly avoided a triage situation where your condition decided if were going to get treated. A second order effect that might not be obvious is that during the first wave a lot of non-emergency procedures were postponed, a lot of these non-emergency procedures can stil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there is no excess mortality from COVID-19 since July Correct, and that correlates neatly with the number of recorded cases of covid19. One could even draw the conclusion that if less people have covid-19, less people are likely to die from it.
The death rate has plummeted not merely the infection rate. Even where "second waves" are occurring around Europe the death rate for this second wave is substantially lower. https://metro.co.uk/2020/09/20/second-wave-of-cases-not-caus...
1) covid is causing less acute problems 2) The percentage of daily tests that are positive is much lower, meaning that there are nowhere near as many uncounted cases in the wild.
I know which my money is on. Its also easy to prove.