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by ceejayoz 2260 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
scottlocklin 2260 days ago
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?
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ceejayoz 2260 days ago
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.)

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scottlocklin 2260 days ago
>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?

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ceejayoz 2260 days ago
> 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.

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scottlocklin 2260 days ago
Well if locking everyone up in their homes doesn't reduce cases of the ordinary flu, we really need a better understanding of how it is transmitted.

Anyway, let's agree that these numbers are worth tracking. I'm sure someone's tracking them!

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ModernMech 2260 days ago
> 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?

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