Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

ons.gov.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 119 posts

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#61

Post by tremon »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #37
titzer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm looking at this [1] data, Table 4, specifically the row for April. Deaths in April Pneumonia+Influenza, 5yr avg: 2,354.8 Pneumonia+Influenza, 2020: 1,933 COVID: 29,128 [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommun... April was peak, pre-lockdown, full-bl…

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.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#62

Post by cygx »

logicchains wrote: post #43
prox wrote: post #32

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.

>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.

Not as clear as you make it sound: Swedes did change their behaviour/travel patterns in response to Covid-19, the Japanese instituted mask etiquette a century ago, and no one lives in South Dakota.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#63

Post by chrisco255 »

titzer wrote: post #25
chrisco255 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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. I'm looking at this [1] data, Table 4, specifically the row for April. Deaths in April Pneumonia+Influenza, 5yr avg: 2,354.8 Pneumonia+Influenza, 2020: 1,933 COVID: 29,128 [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommun... April was peak, pre-lockdown, full-bl…

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 it was 10-20x in the beginning but it seems as we've learned more it is not the plague we thought it was.

Also note the numbers for August have already flipped so that 4x more people are dying of flu and pneumonia now than of Covid.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#64

Post by ginko »

narrator wrote: post #38
evgen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare Sweden to its immediate neighbors like Norway, Finland, and Denmark and the cost of Sweden's failed response becomes pretty obvious.

They didn't have to shut down the country though and since August there's 6 or less deaths a day. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Norway has a death every 3 days or so right now.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#65

Post by throwaway936482 »

logicchains wrote: post #36
throwaway936482 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largely because we locked down the entire country and had largely stopped community transmission by then I imagine. Now that lockdown has been lifted and what restrictions there are are increasingly being ignored we are seeing increased community transmission, a concomitant increase in hospital admissions and should start seeing an increase in deaths over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully this wave of deaths will b…

> a concomitant increase in hospital admissions and should start seeing an increase in deaths over the next couple of weeks. For the past couple months people have been predicting an increase in deaths to follow the increase in cases, but it hasn't happened.

Yeah but there wasn't really an increase in covid related hospital admissions until recently. Given the issues with the uks testing (and reporting) regime it's rather difficult to draw any conclusions about infection rates from the most widely cited set of figures which are numbers tested (or tests mailed out, or tests manufactured or possibly some other definition of test known only to Matt Hancock). The ONS estimates based on random sampling however show that the infection rate only started increasing again at the beginning of September, which explains why we've only seen hospital admissions rising over the last couple of weeks and deaths haven't climbed much yet. Also, so far, it seems not to have started spreading through care homes again like earlier in the year, which is one of the things which seems to have driven up the death rate so high.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#66

Post by born_a_skeptic »

noobermin wrote: post #24
born_a_skeptic wrote: post #3

I'm not a statistician or a scientist, but I don't it does any good to lump everything together over the past ~9 months and compare it to Influenza and Pneumonia. Just think about it. We barely knew anything about covid or how to treat it at the start of the year. Now, it seems like we have a better understanding and how to potentially treat it. Compare this to Influenza/Pneumonia, which I'm just guessing we've been…

Why make this point and ask for a moving average? The fact that it is new and unknown is part of why it is deadly, and that is reflected in the statistics. Why try to erase one takeaways from this set of statistics?

Like I said in another comment, I could have been more clear on my initial comment.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#67

Post by carlmr »

gridlockd wrote: post #33
bb123 wrote: post #2

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 confusion lies in "just the flu". Actual Influenza is in fact quite dangerous. However, we need to compare COVID-19 to Influenza to get some perspective. I would argue that Influenza is worse than COVID, for the simple reason that it kills more young people and children. The average age of a COVID fatality is higher than life expectancy. Influenza destroys more years of life. We also need to make a distinction be…

>However, we need to compare COVID-19 to Influenza to get some perspective. I would argue that Influenza is worse than COVID, for the simple reason that it kills more young people and children. The average age of a COVID fatality is higher than life expectancy. Influenza destroys more years of life.

I think that's a very good point. And also one of the reasons the perspectives differ so much.

However we don't know yet about the long-term effect of COVID on younger people. It could still very well lead to a decreased quality of life for young people as we've seen in other posts about scarring of the lungs and permanent fatigue.

Granted influenza can cause similar after effects (like pericarditis and permanent fatigue), but it appears to be less frequent.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#68

Post by UrsaMedius »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #42
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#69

Post by polytely »

logicchains wrote: post #43
prox wrote: post #32

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.

>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 still be quite urgent and can have negative consequences for the people who had to wait.

Re: Deaths due to Covid-19 compared with deaths from influenza and pneumonia

#70

Post by gridlockd »

evgen wrote: post #17
gridlockd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem right to me. Euromomo does show a bump for Sweden, though it is still smaller than some other countries that did lockdowns: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps Also, several countries show no excess mortality.

Compare Sweden to its immediate neighbors like Norway, Finland, and Denmark and the cost of Sweden's failed response becomes pretty obvious.

You are cherry-picking countries based on geographic proximity, but that's not really a meaningful factor. Germany is right next to France, France had the stricter lockdown, yet Germany has no excess mortality.

Meanwhile, Norway has almost twice the per-capita GDP of the other nordic countries. Finland has no large metropolitan area. Sweden has more people in elderly care. Lots of factors to consider, but geographic proximity isn't really one.

Post reply on HN