Comparing Covid-19 With the Flu

According to the Covid19 Dashboard maintained by folks at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the world-wide Covid-19 death toll to date is 252,000.

How does that compare with the seasonal flu?

According to a paper entitled Global mortality associated with seasonal influenza epidemics, authored by an international group headed by John Paget of the Netherlands Institute for Health Services, it compares rather modestly, although obviously the final total will be higher.

 According to that paper, which was published last December, during the period 2002-2011:

an average of 389 000 (uncertainty range 294 000-518 000) respiratory deaths were associated with influenza globally each year during the study period, corresponding to ~ 2% of all annual respiratory deaths. Of these, 67% were among people 65 years and older.

So the mortality due to the seasonal flu has averaged 0.05% of the world's population, versus Covid-19's toll thus far of just 0.03%. If the final toll for Covid-19 is twice the toll thus far, then, at 0.06% it will slightly exceed the estimated death toll from flu in the worst year during the period 2002-2011, but it will likely come far short of the worst flu seasons in living memory.

Among the most deadly flu seasons was the year of the Asian flu (1957/58) that killed 70,000 out of 149 million Americans for a death rate of 0.05%, and 1968, the year of the Hong Kong flu (H3N2 virus), which also killed about one out of every two thousand Americans. A final American death toll from Covid-19 of 0.05% would be 280,000, or almost four times the current total. To match the lethality of the Spanish flu of 1918, the death toll would have to be in excess of a million and a half.

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COVID19 Death Toll in Italy: No Need to Panic Yet, or Probably, Ever

March 19, 2020: Today, deaths in Italy due to the the novel Corona virus reached a total of 3,405.

The average age of those who died was 79.5 years.

Most who died suffered from one or several other diseases, including heart disease, emphysema and diabetes.

Prior to the COVID19 outbreak, Italy's death rate was running at about 10.6 per thousand, equivalent to 639,000 per year for the country as a whole.

So deaths attributable to the novel Corona virus have thus far increased Italy's death rate for the year by at most one half of one percent.

However, since most of those carried away by the Corona virus were both very old and more or less seriously ill due to other causes, many, probably most, would have died in the current year anyway.

Therefore, when 2020 ends, the effect of the Corona virus on Italy's death toll for the year may be rather small to negligible.

Yet the Western nations are shutting down their economies and debauching the government finances in the name of what is merely another strain of flu.

Looks like a colossal scam from which those with inside knowledge of government planning will make fortunes.

What Governments should be doing is something sensible like urging old folks to self-isolate, providing old-folks with home delivery of food, medicine, etc., and getting everyone to take at least 1000 units of vitamin D every day.

Radical measures beyond such obvious, minimal and sensible actions, should prompt voters to punish governments severely, as in booting from office, for buggering up the economy, and creating schemes for looting the treasury. Trump Out, Trudeau Out, Xi Out, etc.

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