Death Rates of Past Flu Pandemics

In doing a cursory look at some recent past Pandemics, Flu related I found the following:

Another flu pandemic, the "Asian Flu" began in East Asia in 1957, according to the CDC. That specific influenza virus was an H2N2 strain, which was first detected in Singapore in February 1957. From there, the virus made its way to Hong Kong in April 1957, and in coastal cities in the United States in the summer of 1957. An estimated 1.1 million people died of the Asian flu worldwide, with 116,000 of them in the United States.

The flu pandemic of 1968—also called the Hong Kong Flu—originated in China in July 1968, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Caused by an influenza A virus (H3N2), it was the third pandemic flu outbreak to occur in the 20th century, killing one million people worldwide and about 100,000 people in the US alone.

According to Encyclopaedia Brittanica, it's believed that 1957's Asian Flu pandemic may have given rise to the 1968 pandemic through a process called "antigenic shift," in which there are small changes to the genes of a flu virus which can lead to changes in the surface proteins of a virus—HA (hemagglutinin) and NA (neuraminidase)—which trigger the body's immune response. Ultimately, those antigenic shifts, is why people can get the flu more than once, according to the CDC, and why a yearly flu vaccine is necessary for the best protection against the virus and its ever-changing nature.

The most recent flu pandemic in the US, initially known as "swine flu," occurred in 2009 with a novel influenza virus, H1N1, not previously identified in either animals or humans, per the CDC. The virus was actually first detected in the US, and spread quickly cross the US and the world. According to the CDC, between April 12, 2009 and April 10, 2010, there were 60.8 million cases, 274,304 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the US due to the virus. The CDC also estimated that up to 575,400 people died worldwide.

According to the CDC, the 2009 flu pandemic primarily affected children and middle-aged adults (older adults had immunity, likely from a previous exposure to a similar H1N1 virus). And while the pandemic officially ended on August 10, 2010, the (H1N1)pdm09 virus continues to circulate as a seasonal flu virus, causing illness, hospitalization, and deaths worldwide every year.

In each of these recent cases the number of people that died is pretty staggering, yet I don't don't know whether there was a panic like we are seeing with the Coronavirus.

I was a kid during the Hong Kong Flu epidemic, 13, and I can't recall if there was any kind of panic then.

Right now with this Pandemic, we are not seeing the kind of deaths yet that previous ones have had, of course we don't know exactly what the real story in China is.

What we know is this virus for most is mild and people recover, some of the death rate clusters are being seen in Nursing Homes, and those have compromised immune systems from various diseases.

I believe one factor causing the panic is the fact this virus can spread easily and even by people who are asymptomatic.

oh the numbers i came up with are similar to typical annual death rate for flu, what a coincidence

Not sure what numbers you're using to come up with that, but the World Health Organization estimates CV-19 to have a 3.4% current Case Fatality Rate, and the CFR for the flu is < 1% (.83% actually, and only in those > 65). That means CV-19 is at least 4X more deadly than the flu..

Yeah there’s a huge problem with those numbers.

When they test for coronavirus, are they doing random samples of the population? Not at all.
Are they testing all those who have symptoms of Coronavirus?
No...

Have you seen how few tests have been done in these countries? I think you might be really shocked how few.

The people who are getting tested are often those who are really sick, or have very strong reason for thinking they might be (they just got off a cruise ship full of sick chinese).

So if you’re going to be alarmist and say omg death rate is 4%, consider that there might be huge numbers of undiagnosed cases throwing your numbers wayyy off.

My number of .5% is from south korea, which has the most extensive, drive through testing. But even this is not a random sample. People self select for these tests, and even if you show up they will not test you unless an interview shows you have reason to suspect you might have it (travel history + symptom).

But in reality disease vectors mean many people can get it indirectly through others and have it when they don’t even suspect it.

So even my .5% estimate is probably grossly exaggerated, which i admit in my post when i call my numbers worst case.
i might continue in a second post later.

One of my cousins died from the swine flu despite moving him to one of the best hospitals in the state.

I don't think I'm more knowledgeable than you, but here are a couple of charts you may or may not find helpful:

Apply common sense. Out of approx 125 patients in the nursing home in WA over 25 have died in the last 2.5 weeks.

Do you think a nursing home loses 20 percent of thier patients in 2.5 weeks from a regular flu? They said themselves today in a report the norm over that period would be 3 to 4, not 26.

Thats bad no matter how you look at it. Thats clearly not regular flu. And I dont know about you guys but I dont want to risk catching it and I sure as heck dont want my parents catching it.

Fair point for sure - if you increase the denominator (# of people confirmed infected), you’ll lower the CFR.

That said, the WHO is still to the best of my knowledge (as of today) saying the CFR is ~3.4%. And S. Korea seems to be an outlier (although not sure why) - China is 3.8%, for example and IMHO gives us the most accurate #s given it’s most established over there, and there’s a lot more data over a longer period of time to analyze.

Worse, though, the number of infected needing serious hospitalization (up to and including intubation) is reported to be 15-20%. If that’s anywhere near accurate, it’ll collapse our healthcare system.

You may have seen the press that Italy’s healthcare system is already buckling under the strain of only 5,800 cases. They’re out of doctors and are asking retired doctors and nurses to come out of retirement to help. Imagine what will happen when the # needing hospitalization increase beyond what are relatively pretty small %s at this point in time..

I saw a good post here earlier this AM (can’t find at the moment) of an analysis shared on Twitter that essentially proves (again, via reasonable projections and hard data vs hyperbole) that the US health system could quite easily hit max capacity if not collapse outright sometime around July of this year. Guess we will see what happens..hopefully we’ll dodge that and get a handle on this thing long before that time.

Not that I know of..if they have, I haven’t seen the analysis.

Even if the CFR #s are currently over-estimated (not sure I think it is and am just going off latest WHO numbers), the R0 (spreadability/infectious rate) is what has me the most concerned. This thing is MORE contagious than the Spanish Flu, with a R0 of up to 3.5 (if I remember right..it’s mid 3s somewhere). Spanish Flu was 2.0’ish.

CFR aside, this thing spreads like wildfire. That’s why we’re seeing huge exponential increases in cases in Italy and Iran for instance.

Even worse, it can spread asymptomatically. And take up to 28 days (average 5-6) to show symptoms. So imagine all the highly infectious people moving around on flights, mass transit, in schools, churches, restaurants, events and crowds who may not even know they have it. That’s not good.

Exactly! That’s a 20% (25/125) CFR - but also only a bit higher than the CDC numbers posted up-thread (14.8?%) for those age 80+.

I’m also not yet entirely convinced the CDC truly knows CFR for different age groups at this point. Our sample set is still relatively small, so calculating it has got to be darn near impossible. For that reason, the WHO estimate of 3.4% aggregate is probably the best we have to work with at this point.

i told you why south korea is an outlier.

Because they are testing drastically more than everyone else.
They actually have drive through testing.

There are far more people infected with coronavirus than people think. And the death rate is far, far lower than the estimate by WHO for the reasons i gave. It’s like you say, numerator vs denominator. If there are far more people infected than people think, the death rate is far lower than people think. Take a look in amazement at how few people have been tested, then you will realize what bunk the death rate estimate is. But it’s still dangerous for old people.

Lots of healthy people will get infected by coronavirus and not ever report in or get counted. Many of them might suspect they had something else. Remember the evacuation of US citizens from the cruise ship to anchorage? None of them on the flight had symptoms. On landing, tests revealed quite a number had it. But they had flown together, side by side. (duhhh!!!!)
How many disease vectors is that and what percent of US infections will result from it?

I am not dismissive of the potential of this virus to be terrible until may or june. The growth rate in Iran and Italy is bad right now. It probably is bad in a lot of other countries not reported and not tested.

It could overwhelm the health care system in places with too many old people requiring ventilator support. It could cause severe economic disruption with greater impacts abroad. A rare chance it mutates into something awful.

I think you’re missing a critical point here..

The CFR is # dead / # infected.

It is NOT # dead / # tested.

So, S. Korea testing more people does not matter. It’s still dead / infected. Not dead / tested.

Ergo, the CFR does not go down (as you think it will) unless the number of CONFIRMED infected increase compared to the # dead. And that, AFAIK is not happening in S. Korea or elsewhere.

It’s not “rubbish” or “garbage numbers”, it’s MATH. More importantly, it’s THE # the WHO is using. I’m not making up the number.

Per https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ the # dead so far globally is 3,569. # confirmed infected is 105,956.

3,569 / 105,956 = 3.3673%, or ~3.4%.

It’s not helpful to claim things are “garbage numbers” when the independent, objective data says otherwise.

PS - while S. Korea does have a lower CFR than the global average of 3.4%, it’s not explained by a larger # of tests (for reasons mentioned in my earlier post).

S. Korea does appear to be an outlier when compared to China (3.8%), USA (4.8%), Italy (3.9%), Iran (2.5%) and other global hot spots.

“I think you’re missing a critical point here..
The CFR is # dead / # infected.
It is NOT # dead / # tested.”

You are completely wrong.

You are the one missing the critical point.

You think the 3.4% death estimate is # dead / # infected.

That isn’t close to true. What you believe is a galaxy away from reality.

The 3.4% figure is actually # dead / CONFIRMED CASES.

There a huge, huge numbers of people who will be infected with coronavirus and never be recognized officially as a “confirmed case”.

People who get minimally sick, and quickly recover, never knew they had it. Maybe they thought they had something else, or maybe they even just thought they were just a little under the weather. People who get sick and stay home and never check in. Nope, none of them in the numbers.

How about the cruise ship comedian who escaped mandatory hotel room quarantine in japan, boarded a flight to USA. He said he felt no shame because he was “sure he didn’t have it” since he didn’t have symptoms. But maybe he was infected and went on to infect an ever going tree of further infections. Most of them not counted by WHO....

The U.S. news media and even some here are reporting data from communist China government agencies as truth.

This article here shows that the corona virus death rate reported from communist China government agencies is not reliable:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/20/experts-say-confusion-over-coronavirus-case-count-in-china-is-muddying-picture-of-spread/

The news media is creating panic just for political reasons. the news media is trying to create a global economic depression that WILL kill millions worldwide just to get rid of one man Donald Trump in an election.

The 2018 flu caused 80,000 deaths in the USA. If what you all and the news media are saying were true then this corona would cause close to a million deaths this year in the USA alone( This will not happen ).

It's all election year news media hype. The corona virus only appeared a few months ago. there is not enough testing to conclude that death rate.

There is milions of times more media hype than for the 2009 swine flu and we all know the reasons.

Do you think an economic depression won't kill people? Is that what you want?

>”It’s not “rubbish” or “garbage numbers”, it’s MATH.”

Math doesn’t require lying with statistics

>”More importantly, it’s THE # the WHO is using. I’m not making up the number.”

You’re not making up the number, your misrepresenting what it means and grossly misapplying it to create wildly hallucinatory estimates

>”Per https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ the # dead so far globally is 3,569. # confirmed infected is 105,956.”

Right... Confirmed infected. Just simple math right?
Huge numbers of infected people are not counted as “confirmed cases”, rendering your death estimate as... garbage.

>”It’s not helpful to claim things are “garbage numbers” when the independent, objective data says otherwise.”

When you misapply statistics, it renders your conclusions garbage

I DO agree the media is milking this for all it’s worth. They’re absolutely gleeful to have ANYTHING to hang onto in order to defeat DJT in November.

That said, I also have read enough independent experts with no apparent political skin in the game to conclude that it is not ALL MSM inspired fear-mongering.

Everyone is free to do their own research and reach their own conclusions. FWIW and from what I’ve read and seen, this has the potential to be on the order of the Spanish Flu of 1918-19 OR WORSE. People can agree or disagree. But I’m a bit tired of all the hammering of people who are trying their best to make sense of all the craziness (for their own selfish reasons, like keeping themselves and their families safe) with others assuming they are ‘trolls’ or just trying to stir up chaos to bring down DJT. Nothing can be further from the truth.

From my own perspective, nothing would make me happier than returning to the “pre-CV-19” days - and getting DJT re-elected in November. I know my retirement portfolio for one sure would be in a lot better shape than it is now, after getting pounded the past couple of weeks. No fun for sure.

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