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Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

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Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#51

Post by sgt101 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #44
kolinko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were virtually no deaths attributed to COVID last winter - everything started in March, past the influenza peak. This winter the number of deaths from COVID will be an order of magnitude higher than the deaths from flu on an average tear. So even if we attributed every sobgle death from flu to covid, it wouldn’t change the overall picture on Covid really.

Testing didn't really start until March, so you can't possibly know the answer to that. We're already back to average death levels (maybe even below average if the recent provisional numbers hold up): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm Click "percent of expected deaths" column to see. We thought Covid was an order of magnitude deadlier than the flu, but it's looking more and more like that's not the…

I hope you are right.

But from your link : is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated. Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods.

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#52

Post by Volundr »

chrisco255 wrote: post #44
kolinko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were virtually no deaths attributed to COVID last winter - everything started in March, past the influenza peak. This winter the number of deaths from COVID will be an order of magnitude higher than the deaths from flu on an average tear. So even if we attributed every sobgle death from flu to covid, it wouldn’t change the overall picture on Covid really.

Testing didn't really start until March, so you can't possibly know the answer to that. We're already back to average death levels (maybe even below average if the recent provisional numbers hold up): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm Click "percent of expected deaths" column to see. We thought Covid was an order of magnitude deadlier than the flu, but it's looking more and more like that's not the…

I'd be a little careful with that chart. I was working with the raw data provided on this page: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm, and the CDC warns that even the data going back into August may be incomplete. I'd assume this data comes with the same caveat, so we may well see these numbers increase the reporting comes in.

Edit: from the asterisk on the page you linked: "*Data during this period are incomplete because of the lag in time between when the death occurred and when the death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting purposes. This delay can range from 1 week to 8 weeks or more, depending on the jurisdiction and cause of death."

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#53

Post by thebruce87m »

jmnicolas wrote: post #4

I can say that for march to may in France everybody that died with COVID like symptoms was counted as a COVID fatality since we didn't have enough tests. So it could very well be that many people died of the flu but were counted as COVID, we'll never know.

Excess mortality data is here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Looks like minimal deaths from flu during normal flu months in 2020 followed by a large spike (COVID). The spike appears at the end of the flu season, but the previous patterns suggest you should have been seeing excess mortality earlier if flu was bad this year, so my money is on minimal flu deaths.

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#54

Post by NoOneNew »

drivebycomment wrote: post #45
NoOneNew wrote: post #22

81k is kind of a shitty sample size to make a sweeping worldwide judgement for 7+billion. Next part, since the focus of 2020 was Covid testing, I'm pretty sure flu testing resources were lessened in the process, if not borderline ignored. At what point was it okay to judge a population on 0.0000001157142% sample size? While I'm not a fan of the WHO anymore, to be fair to them, where the hell do they say the flu disap…

This is a common misunderstanding of the statistics. The sample size is more a function of the target variance and the confidence level, not as much on the overall population. 81k, if picked properly, would be sufficient for their purpose.

Okay, what are the rules to determining the proper sample? How can you objectively determine if one sample is better or worse than another?

Re: Global circulation of influenza viruses in 2020

#55

Post by drivebycomment »

NoOneNew wrote: post #54
drivebycomment wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misunderstanding of the statistics. The sample size is more a function of the target variance and the confidence level, not as much on the overall population. 81k, if picked properly, would be sufficient for their purpose.

Okay, what are the rules to determining the proper sample? How can you objectively determine if one sample is better or worse than another?

If you are asking about sample size selection, you can use: http://www.tools4dev.org/resources/how-to-choose-a-sample-si...

If you want to evaluate quality of a sample, that's an entirely different issue. You may want to look up different sampling methods.

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