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"Looking at the year-to-date (using the most up-to-date data we have available), the number of deaths up to 25 September 2020 was 453,771, which is 53,888 more than the five-year average."
That’s just in England and Wales.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why show five graphs between 1990-2000, and zero for the next twenty years?
Those are the worst flu seasons (in recent history) in Sweden.
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…
[0]: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/coronavirus--covid-19--ca...
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.
So if people insist that Covid-19 is just like the flu, agree with them and remind them of a new flu without vaccines, just like the Spanish Flu.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Att the start of the pandemic Sweden had the next-lowest number of ICU places per capita in Europe (Portugal had the lowest). The capacity was doubled, field hospitals were built... and not used since the hospitals could handle the inflow. This was partly due to some very controversial and in my opinion unethical guidelines which mandated morphing instead of oxygen for certain groups of elderly (i.e. involuntary euth…
> This was partly due to some very controversial and in my opinion unethical guidelines which mandated morphing instead of oxygen for certain groups of elderly (i.e. involuntary euthanasia) This is an extremely serious accusation. I live in Sweden and have not seen any reference to this practice mentioned in media.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52704836
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-is-taking-a-high-to...
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…
The number of deaths from flu, pneumonia, and Covid are about 50% higher than the year 2000 (Jan-Aug) and about 25% higher than the year 1983. Do those numbers justify draconian shutdowns and bankrupting half of humanity? I'm not so sure. In the early days, we believed that Covid was 10-20 times deadlier than the flu, and that's what was used to justify the draconian measures. Note also these numbers are for the UK,…
These are the numbers with "draconian" counter measures. We can only imagine the numbers without them. And that is what should be compared with the numbers from flu and pneumonia. Luckily, we don't have these numbers.
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 is pretty damming to anyone who claims "its just > the flu" Any discussion about the COVID deaths that does not take age into account is not worth the time. For the younger population it may actually look better than the flu.
Some things to consider from looking at the raw data: The 5-year average minimum of deaths from "Influenza and pneumonia" is about 50 cases per day. The average for 2020 is about half that. Adding up COVID fatalities and "Influeanza and pneumonia" after July comes to about 50 cases per day. In other words, there is no excess mortality from COVID-19 since July.
> 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.
Not quite. The number of recorded cases in the UK from one month ago is equal to the number of recorded cases at the height of the first wave, yet the fatalities are 10x lower.
I do expect excess mortality due to COVID-19 in the coming months, but not to the same extent as during the first wave. We need to re-evaluate the risk profile based on those numbers, not the numbers of the first wave.
> One could even draw the conclusion that if less people have covid-19, less people are likely to die from it.
One could also draw the conclusion that the more people have already died from COVID-19, the less people are likely to die from it in the future, because fewer susceptible people remain in the pool. Unlike with Influenza, it takes many decades of lifetime to develop a serious risk of dying from COVID.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, now open Table 5 on that same spreadsheet. And take a look at the numbers for the year 2000. # of deaths Jan-Aug (due to either flu, pneumonia or Covid) 2000: 40,436 2020: 14,013 + 48,168 Yes, this is significant and certainly Covid seems to be able to spread across a vulnerable population much more quickly than the flu but it doesn't seem to be orders of magnitude deadlier on balance. I get why people thought…
When you average over a long timespan that includes unprecedented global steps to limit this thing. Also, essentially nobody was infected with COVID in January, so you are just flat out being disingenuous. You could as well go back to November if you really want to make the numbers look good for your argument. > I get why people thought it was 10-20x in the beginning It was 10x in the beginning. It averaged 12x for a…
The virus is getting less deadly. You can have many hypotheses for why that is: better treatments, younger patients, viral mutations, or just better testing which is giving us a clearer picture of the actual threat.
But you can't deny that YTD, the data does not show a disease that is anywhere close to 10-12x the flu. The fact that the flu has already surpassed Covid in monthly deaths (despite being less infectious) by the month of August at a rate of 4x Covid should tell you something, and we're not even in peak flu season yet.
Like others have mentioned, if this disease is capable of spreading much more rapidly than the flu, then it may knock out many of the same people who would have been vulnerable to the flu in a subsequent year. It may be that better treatments cause the death rate to continue to plummet. Is it fair to compare a disease we have been fighting for thousands of years to a novel virus we had no idea about 8 months ago? Probably not. As best practices and treatments get established it may very well turn out that Covid remains less deadly than the flu in perpetuity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This was partly due to some very controversial and in my opinion unethical guidelines which mandated morphing instead of oxygen for certain groups of elderly (i.e. involuntary euthanasia) This is an extremely serious accusation. I live in Sweden and have not seen any reference to this practice mentioned in media.
I saw something related to it in two outlets, the BBC and YLE (finnish news). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52704836 https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-is-taking-a-high-to... https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11433976
In essence, palliative care for cancer does not translate into the same effect with COVID-19.
https://www.dagensmedicin.se/artiklar/2020/06/15/palliativ-v...