[ceejayoz]

The point: Comparing annual flu deaths when we don't shut down the whole world to COVID-19 deaths when we do (especially to make the claim they're similarly dangerous) is insane.

If 100 people drown in lakes, that's not really odd. If 100 people drown in the middle of the Sahara a thousand miles from the nearest water, that's weird.

[scottlocklin]

Looked to me like he was comparing flu deaths now to corona deaths now. If indeed those numbers are comparable or the same, we've probably made a terrible mistake. Maybe looking at total pneumonia deaths for anomalies is the right thing to do?

[ceejayoz]

> If indeed those numbers are comparable or the same, we've probably made a terrible mistake.

No, probably not. The seasonal flu infects a billion people a year, and still doesn't do things like collapse Italy's healthcare system.

[scottlocklin]

You're changing the subject: if indeed the number of deaths from flu and covid are the same, during a quarantine, we have made a terrible mistake. I have no idea if they are the same. Do you?

[ceejayoz]

You need to reconcile the "no worse than the flu" idea with "collapsed the northern Italian healthcare system". If you're proposing they're similar in impact, you need to explain why their actual real-life impact is not similar.

The CDC estimates somewhere between 24k and 63k flu deaths since October. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

The previous season was estimated at 34,200. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

COVID-19 has killed at least 16k in the US, starting on Feb 29, with significant mitigation efforts that are not done for flu. Almost all of that is in the last week - the death toll stood at only 1.8k on 4/4. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm

Comparing the two is like claiming a bicycle is winning a 10 mile race versus a Ferrari because it got a head start and got to mile #1 faster. (It's also likely some estimated flu deaths are actually COVID deaths.)

[scottlocklin]

>You need to reconcile...

No, actually, I don't need to reconcile anything. I'd prefer to stick to the OP assertion. If flu deaths are similar to C19 deaths during mitigation, it is abundantly obvious that we've made a terrible mistake. You seem to want to litigate something. I want to do a t-test.

Of course if C19 deaths are 10x what the flu is during mitigation, and overall pneumonia deaths are much higher (aka we're not mistaking flu for C19), then shutting down the world economy was a good idea. I have no idea which thing is true. Your statements above indicate you don't either.

Are total pneumonia deaths (aka flu and covid19 summed up) bigger or smaller than in previous years? Presumably someone's tracking this?

[ceejayoz]

> If flu deaths are similar to C19 deaths during mitigation, it is abundantly obvious that we've made a terrible mistake.

You're asking for data we won't have yet. As I noted, COVID deaths are only just ramping up; 90% of them in the USA are in the last week or so.

There are early indications the lockdowns have impacted flu, as is fairly obvious. Local to me:

https://www.rochesterregional.org/news/2020/01/flu-season-20...

> New York State is reporting 157,426 positive cases. The latest data (ending March 28) shows a 77% decrease in reported cases from the previous week.

[ModernMech]

> If flu deaths are similar to C19 deaths during mitigation, it is abundantly obvious that we've made a terrible mistake. You seem to want to litigate something. I want to do a t-test.

Note that the lockdowns are not just to avoid spreading the disease, they are to avoid spreading it so quickly that it overflows the hospital system. The theory of "flattening the curve" is that you keep the peak hospitalization number under hospital capacity but spread the infection out over a longer period of time. The area under the curve (total hospitalizations due to infections) remains the same either way. Although it means at no time will someone needing hospitalization be turned away due to lack of capacity -- resulting in fewer overall deaths.

Put another way, let's agree that the number of flu deaths this season of 24k – 62k and 410k – 740k hospitalizations is acceptable from an economic perspective. We can lose and hospitalize that many people and operate as a society. How would it change if those deaths and infections occurred in the span of a month instead of 5 months?

[dragonwriter]

> If indeed those numbers are comparable or the same

Well if you mean now now and not just annual totals or totals over the 2019-2020 flu season, they aren't the same or comparable, Covid-19 is the leading US cause of daily death, flu is way back in the pack.

[whb07]

This is definitely most, certainly not the case. I'll explain to you why:

A = set of top 5 disease killers in the U.S (hypertension, obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc)

B = set of corona deaths in the U.S

The intersection between B and A is over 90% of set B's numbers. So basic counting shows that in order to get the proper amount of deaths you'd have to perform the following calculation of:

A + B - ( intersection of A and B)

Unfortunately most people are counting by adding A+B which results in double counting as person X who died in set B is also in set A.