Is the CoronaVirus Actually Saving Lives Overall? Do Coro Precautions Reduce More Flu Deaths Than Die From Coro?

math wizner wrote:

How many confirmed cases are of people who are less than 35? Look up the answer and you will realize that the death rate will be about the same as the flu.

People over 35 also exist.

This is not a good post...

The danger right now is not the deaths that have currently happened, but what will happen soon.

Flu deaths are spread out over a 8 month period during flu season. Healthcare system has capacity for patients who need to be hospitalised. We also have a vaccine that provides a strong level of protection.

Also as a reminder average time to have serious symptoms is roughly two weeks are you are first infected. People are only slightly sick for the first week. Right now death totals even with social distancing will get worse. Viewing this as being net ahead, is not a good way to look at it.

With this virus (that I remind you has caused 10% of the people in Italy who get it to need ICU support) all of the cases that happen for flu might happen in 2-3 weeks (or in worst case scenario many many more). What this means is that everyone who needs important non-viral hospital services may die because the hospital will only be able to service COVID cases.

The problem is not right now (so stop citing the current death total), the problem is in the future.

Dwightarm wrote:

The flu's fatality is .1%. COVID19 is 2%.

The Tomas Pueyo paper above explains very clearly.

It's under 1%, maybe 0.5%, if you have a health care system which is functioning well. When this gets overwhelmned (Hubei, Iran, Italy) and half the medics are sick and the people needing critical care don't get it, it's nearer 3%.

Not to mention those 80-year-olds going in to hospital for other routine reasons who pick up a bug and die from it.

The panic over coronavirus will hurt more people than the virus itself. What good it is for a infected 70 yr old to get better when their retirment is wiped out?

One other piece of info. Just remember the first patient in Italy was a 38 year old marathon runner. He is still in the hospital on a ventilator, this is not only going to affect only old people. It will mainly affect old people, but it will be much worse than a normal flu.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-italy-investigates-hospital-that-failed-to-catch-a-coronavirus-super/

one problem with relying on these numbers is the fact that we nearly always know whether a death is related or due to corona. However, we don't know about people who have corona and don't know it. There's likely 10-20% greater numbers of people who have had the corona and didn't realize it, which can lessen that mortality rate significantly. Perhaps not by half, but it could be closer than we think. it's certainly not *more* than 2%, as we're never going to be dealing with large numbers of unreported deaths. We *are* dealing with large numbers of unreported sicknesses.

joedirt wrote:

What is your source?

At last count, there were 132,306 confirmed cases with 4,946 deaths. Admittedly there are likely a number of unconfirmed cases out there, but a number of the confirmed cases that have not yet recovered will die as well. 2% is probably about right if one assumes there is an equal amount of unconfirmed cases out there and if a portion of the unrecovered confirmed cases end up as fatalities.

uppitty wrote:

I think we are treating CoV correctly.

I'm totally ignoring it, so thank you very much.

chia wrote:

The panic over coronavirus will hurt more people than the virus itself. What good it is for a infected 70 yr old to get better when their retirment is wiped out?

Right, but social security status (based on payroll taxes) is affected by the Trump virus, not the corona virus.

not my real name wrote:

we nearly always know whether a death is related or due to corona

Actually no, because I don't believe that's the case.

"Even if the 5K doubles to 10k"

Mate, it'll double within a few days

Let alone a few months

Comparisons of death rates for seasonal flu and Covid-19 are still very questionable. A brief description of CDC estimates of flu burden for 2019-2020 are shown in the link

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

As shown, only about 1/2 of the symptomatic flu infections result in any medical visit. We do not know the med visit/infection ratio for Covid-19, it could be higher, lower, or about the same as for flu. If it turns out to be similar to flu (i.e., about 1/2), then the reported mortality rates are about double the actual mortality rate.

Also worth noting, all the CDC numbers for flu are based on estimates rather than counting of all events (even deaths), but the statistics for flu are based on many flu seasons. With Covid-19, no one has the historical data to form estimates with reasonable reliability. Right now, the Covid-19 numbers being reported publicly seem to represent actual counts of diagnosed cases (lab confirmed plus clinically diagnosed) and actual counts of deaths. At some point it is likely there will be some reasonable estimates of the relative numbers of infections and diagnosed cases, but not yet.

I don't know why it chose to display that graph. The estimates I referenced are on the linked page.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on LetsRun that the net result of the Coronavirus would be a REDUCTION in overall deaths because steps taken to prevent CoV would result in a dramatic decline in flu cases and deaths.

That trend is now visible. The number of new flu cases in the US peaked in mid-February and then plummeted by about 75%! You'd think someone in the media would talk about this... if only to point out that preventive steps work.

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/flu_by_age_virus.html

Really vile display of misinformation. Nice trolling. I have flagged for deletion

Look at the grammar in this original post. This is a foreign troll.

zxcvzcxv wrote:

Look at the grammar in this original post. This is a foreign troll.

Ding Ding Ding

Following up on my previous post, the number of US flu cases at the peak in mid-Feb was ~3,300/week. Three weeks later, it had dropped to only 800/week. Data for the first week of March isn't available yet, but it should be even lower as people start taking prevention even more seriously.

By the way, those flu numbers seem really low to me, but that's the CDC's website.

fisky wrote:

The number of new flu cases in the US peaked in mid-February and then plummeted by about 75%! You'd think someone in the media would talk about this... if only to point out that preventive steps work.l

Oh yeah, changing the name is a preventive step.

rojo wrote:

You raise a fascinating point. FASCINATING. People keep social distance, wash their hands all the time and fewer overall die. Wow.

Google says that 650,000 die worlwide annually with the flue with 88,100 of those coming in China.

If we are at 5,000 worldwide deaths right now due to Coronavirus, even if that doubles to 10k then if the flu deaths are reduced by just 2%, we are net ahead.

Really good post.

Rojo: