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by susodapop 1258 days ago
That makes sense to me. The population has increased since 1980 but flu deaths remain constant, which means a lower mortality rate. Presumably there is some correlation between increased flu vaccination rate and decreased mortality rate.
1 comments
sfusato 1258 days ago
The overall better care didn't improved as well though? Are flu cases treated the same way today as 40 years ago? The number of flu shots increased by a factor of x16 over a 40 year period. With these numbers I would've expected a serious dent on the flu deaths graph regardless of population.
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dragonwriter 1258 days ago
> The number of flu shots increased by a factor of x16 over a 40 year period. With these numbers I would've expected a serious dent on the flu deaths graph regardless of population.

It went from negligible to about 2/3 the population, but the population increased by about 50%. If the vaccine was 50% effective in preventing flu deaths, and there were no other changes (or if better care was exactly offset by increased vulnerability due to aging population) you would expect no change in total deaths.

Your intuition just looking at the multiplier on vaccinated population just seems to be a bad intuition.

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sfusato 1256 days ago
> the population increased by about 50%

> (or if better care was exactly offset by increased vulnerability due to aging population)

Why are you counting the old people twice?

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