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Torillian on 12 October 2020
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EricHiggin said:
SvennoJ said:
Comparable to the flu again?

CDC estimates about 56,000 Americans die from the flu each year. Covid-19 already claimed over 219,000 lives in the USA, that with maybe 10% infected.

The highest estimate for Flu world wide seems to be 650K
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/
Worldwide over 1 million have already died from Covid-19 while only 10% (might) have had it.

What will a direct comparison covering the same time frame show when it comes to flu deaths vs covid? Odds are beyond unlikely that the U.S. is going to end up with around 60,000 flu death's again, plus 220,000+ covid death's. The point being, it's all but certain, that some of those unfortunate souls, who would've statistically died from the flu, are going to have died from covid instead. How many that is exactly who knows? How does that apply worldwide?

The 2019-2020 flu season in the US looks like it was about a middle of the road kind of season when you look at hospitalizations so there's little reason to think deaths will be notably off the average.

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

60,000 deaths is not a standard flu season btw. Deaths from Flu has been as low as 12,000 in the 2011-2012 season to as high as 61,000 in 2017-2018 but just last year was notably better with 34,000 deaths in the 2018-2019 season. I think the idea that 60,000 deaths is standard came when covid deaths were in that ballpark and people wanted to claim that it was no worse than a standard flu season when in reality they were already comparing it to the worst flu season in 10 years. 

Right now the estimate is that the 2019-2020 season had 22,000 flu deaths which is pretty reasonable and I'd be hard pressed to make the claim that that is lower because they died from Corona before flu could get them. 

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html



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