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Comparing COVID-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is like Comparing Apples to Oranges

Jeremy Samuel Faust

6-8 minutes

In late February, when the stock market was beginning to fall over coronavirus fears, President Donald Trump held a briefing at the White House to reassure people that there was little chance of the virus causing significant disruption in the United States.

“I want you to understand something that shocked me when I saw it,” he said. “The flu, in our country, kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. That was shocking to me.”

His point was to suggest that the coronavirus was no worse than the flu, whose toll of deaths most of us apparently barely noticed.

In early April, as social distancing measures began to succeed in flattening the curve in some parts of the country, an influential forecasting model revised the number of American deaths from coronavirus that it was projecting by summer downward to 60,400, and some people again began making comparisons to the flu, arguing that, if this will ultimately be no worse than a bad flu season, we should open the country up for business again. (On April 22, the model’s forecast rose to 67,641 deaths.)

But these arguments, like the president’s comments, are based on a flawed understanding of how flu deaths are counted, which may leave us with a distorted view of how coronavirus compares with it.

When reports about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 began circulating earlier this year and questions were being raised about how the illness it causes, COVID-19, compared to the flu, it occurred to me that, in four years of emergency medicine residency and over three and a half years as an attending physician, I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu. I could only remember one tragic pediatric case.

Based on the CDC numbers though, I should have seen many, many more. In 2018, over 46,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Over 36,500 died in traffic accidents. Nearly 40,000 died from gun violence. I see those deaths all the time. Was I alone in noticing this discrepancy?

I decided to call colleagues around the country who work in other emergency departments and in intensive care units to ask a simple question: how many patients could they remember dying from the flu? Most of the physicians I surveyed couldn’t remember a single one over their careers. Some said they recalled a few. All of them seemed to be having the same light bulb moment I had already experienced: For too long, we have blindly accepted a statistic that does not match our clinical experience.

The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates that the CDC produces by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms. These coefficients are based on assumptions of how many cases, hospitalizations, and deaths they believe went unreported. In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths—that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts.

There is some logic behind the CDC’s methods. There are, of course, some flu deaths that are missed, because not everyone who contracts the flu gets a flu test. But there are little data to support the CDC’s assumption that the number of people who die of flu each year is on average six times greater than the number of flu deaths that are actually confirmed. In fact, in the fine print, the CDC’s flu numbers also include pneumonia deaths.

The CDC should immediately change how it reports flu deaths. While in the past it was justifiable to err on the side of substantially overestimating flu deaths, in order to encourage vaccination and good hygiene, at this point the CDC’s reporting about flu deaths is dangerously misleading the public and even public officials about the comparison between these two viruses. If we incorrectly conclude that COVID-19 is “just another flu,” we may retreat from strategies that appear to be working in minimizing the speed of spread of the virus.

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The question remains. Can we accurately compare the toll of the flu to the toll of the coronavirus pandemic?

To do this, we have to compare counted deaths to counted deaths, not counted deaths to wildly inflated statistical estimates. If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second full week of April to the number of people who died from influenza during the worst week of the past seven flu seasons (as reported to the CDC), we find that the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu. In other words, the coronavirus is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.

From this perspective, the data on coronavirus and flu actually match—rather than flying in the face of—our lived reality in the coronavirus pandemic: hospitals in hot spots stretched to their limits and, in New York City in particular, so many dead that the bodies are stacked in refrigerator trucks. We have never seen such conditions.

In that briefing in late February, Trump downplayed the likelihood that the virus would spread significantly in the United States and that extreme measures like closing schools would need to be taken, saying that “we have it so well under control” and returning again to the flu.

“Sixty-nine thousand people die every year—from 26 to 69—every year from the flu,” he said. “Now, think of that. It’s incredible.”

We now know that Trump was disastrously wrong about the threat that the coronavirus posed to the United States. But his take that the cited numbers of flu deaths were incredible? On that, he was spot-on.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views and opinions of Brigham and Women’s Hospital or Harvard Medical School.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Jeremy Samuel Faust

Jeremy Samuel Faust, M.D., M.S., M.A., FACEP,
practices emergency medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital, is an instructor at Harvard Medical School, and is president of the Roomful of Teeth Vocal Arts Project.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... o-oranges/

Flu deaths are over inflated by a CDC algorithm when is the last time you remember someone you know die of the Flu?

once the CDC applies the same type of algorithm to the counted cases of COVID-19 how many people are they going to say died?

I took the diagnostic test twice. One can easily deduce that the second test I mentioned was the antibodies test.

The first result was “invalid.” The second result was “negative.”

China Refuses to Allow WHO Reps to Investigate Coronavirus Origins

Something that Jeremy Samuel Faust neglected to mention in the Scientific American article is that during regular flu seasons there are no travel restrictions, lockdowns, closed businesses, social distancing, and other extreme measures.

In other words, if we had treated Covid-19 like influenza, its numbers would be far higher.

And if we treated influenza like Covid-19, its numbers would be far lower.

Infectious disease research warns coronavirus pandemic could last two years

On 20 April, on page 373 of this thread, I made the following comment:

THE MYSTERIOUS EVENTS IN NORTH KOREA

North Korea has consistently claimed the nation had not been infected with the coronavirus. But excuse me if I don't believe them. Since they border China and have close ties with China, since many of that nation's population has a weakened immune system because of a lack of food, the country is probably crawling with the virus.

Now the leader of that nation Kim Jung- Un is a young man of 36. But he is obese and a heavy smoker. Within the country he is a very public image which means that if the coronavirus had penetrated their borders, he is vulnerable. This is because many co-morbidities are associated with being obese and COVID-19 attacks those with co-morbidities.

On page 357 of this thread I mentioned:

Senior officials in North Korea paid tribute to the remote kingdom's founder Kim Il Sung Wednesday, but the apparent absence of current dictator Kim Jong Un raised questions about whether coronavirus played a part.

The Hermit Kingdom's most important holiday is April 15, the birthday of the country's first dictator, known as the “Day of the Sun.” It's a day that normally includes an immense military parade and synchronized public performances, sometimes involving tens of thousands.

But on Thursday, the Korean Central News Agency said only that a group of senior government, party and military officials paid tribute at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun for Kim Il Sung's 108th birthday.

There was no mention in North Korean state media if current ruler Kim Jong Un visited the mausoleum where the bodies of his grandfather and father, Kim Jong-il, are located. State media only said that floral baskets were "laid at the statues of the great leaders and mosaics picturing their smiling images."

According to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, Kim hasn't skipped visiting the mausoleum during the holiday since inheriting power in 2011. State media typically reports on visits to the site the same day or following morning.

So the latest news out of North Korea, perhaps I should call it gossip, is that on 12 April, Kim Jong-Un underwent surgery for a cardiovascular procedure. So I wonder if it might be appropriate to consider the possibility that the coronavirus might have got him.
----------------------------------
Let us apply a bit of fuzzy logic. Picture the book "Alice in Wonderland" with Kim Jong-Un portraying the Queen of Hearts. The title of a just published article in Newsweek read: NORTH KOREA CONFIRMS CORONAVIRUS CASES FOR FIRST TIME AFTER KIM JONG-UN REPEATEDLY DENIED INFECTIONS. So what do you think Kim Jong-Un would say to his underlings who leaked this information if he were still alive? My guess would be - Off with their heads!

---------------------------------------------------------------

So in the news today was the following article:

A North Korean defector now serving as a lawmaker in the South claimed Friday that he is “99 percent” certain Kim Jong Un is dead.

Ji Seong-ho made the comment without citing his source, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. Rumors have swirled in recent weeks over Kim’s health after the dictator was last spotted in public April 11.

"I've wondered how long he could have endured after cardiovascular surgery. I've been informed that Kim died last weekend," Ji told Yonhap.

"It is not 100 percent certain, but I can say the possibility is 99 percent,” he added, speculating that North Korea, which “is believed to be grappling with a complicated succession issue,” may officially announce the news this weekend.

Source: North Korean defector-turned-lawmaker '99 percent' sure Kim Jong Un is dead

More than 1,300 at Trousdale Turner Correctional Center test positive for COVID-19

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — More than 1,300 individuals at Trousdale Turner Correctional Center have tested positive for COVID-19. In response, Gov. Bill Lee’s Unified Command Group has announced that a mass testing initiative will begin next week for all staff and inmates.

The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed the positive cases on Friday. Out of the 2,450 total tests, more than 1,300 staff and inmates tested positive.

According to the state, analysis of the test results confirmed that 98% of those who tested positive are asymptomatic.

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/more- ... r-covid-19

[quote="ASPartOfMe"]Infectious disease research warns coronavirus pandemic could last two years
[quote]

Amidst all the noise, this is the only thing that concerns me, Prolonged lockdown over 2yrs will result in complete collapse of the current economic systems and mean we are a step closer to global dystopia.

I think there is point where we will have to accept a couple of million deaths globally is better than billions perishing over the next decade,