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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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

#31

Post by Hokusai »

macinjosh wrote: post #13

From the article: > The CDC should immediately change how it reports flu deaths. While in the past it was justifiable to err on the side of substantially overestimating flu deaths, in order to encourage vaccination and good hygiene Doctors, scientists, and the CDC, basically everyone we've been told to always trust when it comes to these matters, are and have been 'substantially' inflating flu death numbers to manipu…

> have been 'substantially' inflating flu death numbers to manipulate public behavior (e.g. to get more people to take vaccinated).

This is the article writer opinion, it is not the CDC official stand on the matter. Similar calculations are currently done for Covid-19. Many articles show the discrepancy between total reported deaths, Covid-19 reported deaths and medium values in previous years. It makes sense.

That the numbers are not perfectly correct does not mean that they are not good enough to use for policies and to inform the public.

> This patronizing behavior from the scientific and political class is destructive.

I like the transparency of publishing the data and the methods to calculate it. That is the contrary of patronizing. I hope that transparency continues to be the norm, even when makes the number easier to criticize for people with little information.

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

#32

Post by ceejayoz »

HPsquared wrote: post #25

Flu or not, it's possible to compare all-cause mortality this year against previous years. That's about as hard data as it gets. How does Covid compare to "seasonal all-cause-winter-deaths"? That's what people are interested in - how unprecedented is the death rate?

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...

> These numbers undermine the notion that many people who have died from the virus may soon have died anyway. In Paris, more than twice the usual number of people have died each day, far more than the peak of a bad flu season. In New York City, the number has spiked to six times the normal amount.

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

#33

Post by r721 »

HPsquared wrote: post #25

Flu or not, it's possible to compare all-cause mortality this year against previous years. That's about as hard data as it gets. How does Covid compare to "seasonal all-cause-winter-deaths"? That's what people are interested in - how unprecedented is the death rate?

>Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across 14 countries analysed by the FT

https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac8...

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

#35

Post by addicted »

HPsquared wrote: post #25

Flu or not, it's possible to compare all-cause mortality this year against previous years. That's about as hard data as it gets. How does Covid compare to "seasonal all-cause-winter-deaths"? That's what people are interested in - how unprecedented is the death rate?

If you count excess deaths, globally where we have data, official Coronavirus deaths are always about half or 2/3rds the excess death.

In other words, it’s likely we are undercounting deaths caused by COVID by a factor of 1.5 to 2 in places which are actually properly tracking COVID deaths.

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

#36

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

HPsquared wrote: post #5

Flu, seasonal pneumonia... what's the diff?

Flu are caused by the viruses, pneumonia is the serious bacterial infection of the lungs potentially caused by having influenza.

You would count seasonal pneumonia if you wanted to see how serious that seasonal flu was.

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

#37

Post by gpderetta »

HPsquared wrote: post #25

Flu or not, it's possible to compare all-cause mortality this year against previous years. That's about as hard data as it gets. How does Covid compare to "seasonal all-cause-winter-deaths"? That's what people are interested in - how unprecedented is the death rate?

in the most affected countries in Europe, it is significantly higher (2, 3 times) than the worst flu seasons in recent times.

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

#38

Post by erodommoc »

HPsquared wrote: post #25

Flu or not, it's possible to compare all-cause mortality this year against previous years. That's about as hard data as it gets. How does Covid compare to "seasonal all-cause-winter-deaths"? That's what people are interested in - how unprecedented is the death rate?

Here's the charts for a number of states in the US. It's pretty dramatic. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/28/us/coronaviru...

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

#39

Post by zenpaul »

Two important takeaways here.

"In fact, in the fine print, the CDC’s flu numbers also include pneumonia deaths."

"If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second full week of April to the number of people who died from influenza during the worst week of the past seven flu seasons (as reported to the CDC), we find that the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu."

For the average person, COVID-19 is better described as "highly contagious and extra deadly pneumonia".

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

#40

Post by gpderetta »

macinjosh wrote: post #13

From the article: > The CDC should immediately change how it reports flu deaths. While in the past it was justifiable to err on the side of substantially overestimating flu deaths, in order to encourage vaccination and good hygiene Doctors, scientists, and the CDC, basically everyone we've been told to always trust when it comes to these matters, are and have been 'substantially' inflating flu death numbers to manipu…

Agree that lying to people (even by selective omission) is a great way to undermine confidence and trust.
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