Wu Ping Cough has snuffed 39,000 or so Americans so far.
Two years ago the everyday flu got 61,000 to 80,000 depending on which CDC release you're reading.
This year normal everyday flu is looking to have killed 24,000 to 62,000 people (the counting ain't near done yet).
Hong Kong (RACIST!) Flu in '68-'69 killed off 100,000 people in the US. This was also a novel coronavirus. This scales to 165,000 dead today if you account for population inflation.
Since Wu Ping Cough appears to be a lot more deadly per case than the flu, we're obviously missing some important data.
If it's as or more virulent than flu, then there should be a lot more deaths. Three times as many from the CFR's I've been seeing.
That means that it's either not as virulent or it's not three times as deadly.
Something to remember about the case fatality rate is that it doesn't even attempt to figure out how many people have the disease who are never treated for it.
The CFR for H5N1 (so called Avian (SPECIESIST) flu) has a CFR of 52.8%! Worldwide deaths from this certain, and infectious, killer? 455.
The CFR doesn't tell you everything, or much, about what you need to know about a disease.
So far, Wu Ping hasn't done near the damage, directly, of several other recent diseases; but our reaction to it sure has.
I keep wondering who benefits most from our overreaction. If it's China, I suggest turning the keys to the left on my count...3...2...1.
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Since you've spent a lot of time trying to process statistics and see how bad those numbers are, let me leave a thought.
ReplyDeleteHow accurate do you think the numbers for the 1918 Spanish Flu are? They didn't have antibody tests. They certainly didn't sequence the virus genome for testing; that was 50 or 75 years away. That could have been several diseases and no one would know.
I think that the numbers for how many people got sick or died with a given set of presented symptoms is pretty good.
DeleteThere has been some exhuming bodies and testing done on Spanish Flu victims, so a few people are known to have died from the same sequenced virus. A very small sampling, but widely spaced geographically.
Hell they're not even certain that cytokine storms are what was the main killer from Spanish Flu infection even if we now strongly suspect that was the mechanism of death.
Figures of deaths from the Spanish Flu are actually relatively accurate, as they counted people who actually had it symptomatically and then died. They did not count deaths from suicide, or cr accident, or any of a bazillion ways to die that showed SF antibodies because they did not have the antibody tests.
DeleteSo. Looks like SpanFlu death, meets parameters, thus SpanFlu death. Does not look like SpanFlu, but more like Cholera or Diptheria or other flu? Then not SpanFlu death.
Now? Today? Dead body, tests positive for Corona-Wuhan antibodies and listed as death by flu, even if the person was asymptomatic. Looking at you, Italy and New York City...