Mortality rate of coronavirus vs seasonal flu (vanity)

3/16/20 | tatown

[tatown]

What if we compared the mortality rate of influenza and coronavirus using only confirmed cases (no estimates)? People seem to like to use a ~0.1% mortality rate for seasonal flu when comparing it to coronavirus. This 0.1% figures includes all of the estimated influenza cases in the US, using modeling, which dramatically lowers the mortality rate. The same modeling/estimating is never applied to coronavirus. What happens when we only use confirmed cases for each and eliminate the models and estimates for total cases?

Per the CDC the number of CONFIRMED seasonal flu cases this year in the US is 222,552 with 22,000 deaths. This calculates to a mortality rate of ~10%.

The number of confirmed coronavirus case in the US is 4743 with 93 deaths. Using the same math, the mortality rate is 1.9%.

Based on these calculations coronavirus appears no more lethal that the seasonal flu and may in fact be significantly less so. Again, this calculation is void of opinion and hysteria and simply relies on data that is known (confirmed cases and confirmed deaths). No estimates, no models, no Chinese data, Iranian data, Italian data, South Korean, etc...

[lepton]

Most people get caught up in the red part, which has its problems. It is the green part that is just junk. ...and multiplied by junk again.

[lepton]

Corona accounts for about 20% of all late winter colds when it switches from a rhino virus to corona and then in spring it is the rhino virus again.

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You don’t appear to understand what you are saying. That’s a bunch of factoids strung together in peculiar ways.

[lepton]

Table 1: Estimated Influenza Disease Burden, by Season — United States, 2010-11 through 2018-19 Influenza Seasons

Bump. Nice chart. It shows how widely both spread and lethality are from year to year.

[lepton]

The numbers offered are an apples-to-apples comparison, which the numbers being tossed around (including by you) are not.

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It is an apples to pears comparison purporting to be a count of tires. Yes, the two comparisons are similar (and not the same), but of a statistic which is not what it purports.

[lepton]

But what if this coronavirus has been around for a few years, but no one knew about it until now?

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The symptoms would have matched - including from samples and tests. They don’t. That’s also why we know that the horrible respiratory flu that went around the US in November and December, and even in January was not this Coronavirus.

We don’t have intentional highly precise widespread testing to directly detect the virus - but there are a number of ways of using any of a variety of existing means to diagnose with less precision. CT-scans and x-rays, which are things people with chest issues have done all the time, are two such.

As widespread as the reports of the respiratory flu this season were, there would have been millions of cases where it would probably require less than a thousand or so to notice the pattern - especially in localized outbreaks where the same group of doctors would see them.

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200241

“A study of CT scans of 21 patients with 2019-nCoV infection (10) showed three (21%) with normal CT scans, 12 (57%) with ground-glass opacity only, and six (29%) with ground-glass opacity and consolidation at presentation. Fifteen patients (71%) had two or more lobes involved, and 16 (76%) had bilateral disease. Interestingly, three patients (14%) had normal scans at diagnosis. One of those patients still had a normal scan at short-term follow-up. Seven other patients underwent follow-up CT (range, 1–4 days; mean, 2.5 days); five (63%) had mild progression, and two (25%) had moderate progression.”

“Overall, the imaging findings reported for 2019-nCoV are similar to those reported for SARS-CoV (11–13) and MERS-CoV (14,15), not surprising as the responsible viruses are also coronaviruses. Given that up to 30% of patients with 2019-nCoV infection develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (8), chest imaging studies showing extensive consolidation and ground-glass opacity, typical of acute lung injury, are not unexpected (16,17). The long-term imaging features of 2019-nCoV are not yet known but presumably will resemble those of other causes of acute lung injury.”

It’s not recommended as a first-line test, because it is only 80-85% indicative in the 30% of cases that present with severe breathing issues...but that is more than enough to detect large numbers of the infection.

[lepton]

If the COVID test checks for antibodies we should both be positive if your theory is accurate,

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When they get the serum tests working and produced, that should provide some interesting answers on a number of fronts.

[lepton]

The Diamond Princess was the perfect model that had over 4400 people on board with the virus for two months. Central air conditioning throughout, central heating, common dining room for everyone and so on.

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There are some fairly heavy modifications to that, especially since the first infected individual didn’t likely interact with all that many people (and may not have even been contagious the whole time). As I recall, after the infected individual came down with the disease (elsewhere), they began confining people to either their quarters or their patios (for those who had them) just off their quarters. Contact as a method of spread was greatly inhibited. While infection can occur through the vents, it is much less able to occur than being in the same room. Severe efforts were being made by the staff to disinfect and avoid exposure, and were taking food to the passengers rather than having them leave their room.

Of those aboard 17 percent got the disease (696) and of those 7 died, which was about one tenth of one percent of its population!!

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It’ll be an interesting study, especially considering that the ship procedures were set up to deal with outbreaks of various diseases and are generally successful. It could be a lot, or it could be surprisingly little when considering the actual conditions and events.

Not to quibble, but it is 743 infected and 7 deaths, with only 325 reported as recovered. Regardless here, the death rate is much lower than elsewhere, which is good news.

[lepton]

Data is data. It doesn’t care about motives or outcomes. It just tells what it tells.

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Data is data. It doesn’t become information until it is manipulated and observed. Math can be done to data, and it will tell you something, but you don’t always know what it is telling you. For example, the average household income in the early 1980s fell - but it told you more about the illegitimacy rate than it did about earnings per job or per hour.

[lepton]

you’re correct, it is a theory. But to sit on the number presently being touted as “confirmed cases” and believe those are the only cases in the country is sheer insanity...

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Sure, but the numbers of people it would take out there to “be like the flu” as some have said are not realistic either. To even say that the ratio of known to unknown for the flu which is untracked is similar to the known to unknown for this Wuhan Coronavirus for which an effort has been made to actually find every single one and trace every case to a known one to see where it came from is extremely flawed.

The numbers are undoubtedly changing as the COVID has made it into the wild, but those were the claims last Monday when the community spread cases were only 40% of the traceable cases. Also you’d even have to define infections in a reasonable way, such as those who have had the disease long enough to be infectious or symptomatic (whether they actually exhibit symptoms or not).

[Osage Orange]

Ha!! Yep!!

[Osage Orange]

Common sense..ain’t all the common.

[DoodleBob]

Thank you - it's from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

[gbs]

You would enjoy reading an article interview with Michael Levitt Israeli Nobel Laureate: “Coronavirus spread is slowing”
That’s the article, is a bit of a celebrity in China now and I hope will be over here too! Has data on the Diamond Princess and almost every other Covid19 data out there! He’s a real ray of sunshine in the perpetual gloom being cast everywhere, even here!

[daniel1212]

You can’t eliminate dead people from the death rate.

No, but neither should you uncritically invoke a misleading mortality rate when 27 deaths are linked to just one nursing home in Washington, according to Public Health Seattle and King County, and Overlake Hospital. (https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/life-care-employees-tested-coronavirus-facility-be-cleaned/EYNT43G5ZBH5BKZ3MATJOVVV5A/)

[AppyPappy]

I’m just telling you the facts because that is all I have. It is what it is

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Just another reason, as we wade through what will ultimately be the real death rates, that entire states shouldn’t be shutting down their businesses until a vast majority of their counties have at least 1 instance of community spread or their own shutdowns or some of each. I think 3/4 of counties would be a good rule of thumb, and compatible with liberty, except 2/3 for Delaware and RI (They have only 3 counties each).

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Sounds great. Maybe its finally weakening, in some cases.

[brookwood]

People who are sick with the seasonal flu don’t get a flu test because they know their risk of dying is very low, e.g. .1%. You are boasting that your crackpot theory is valid because it uses “no estimates, no models”. Here is how the CDC estimates the number of flu cases. .

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm

If you think the CDC has a deficient methodology, you should write an academic paper about it and submit to the Journal of Epidemiology. If not I suggest you should stop posting here.

[Hot Tabasco]

CONFIRMED seasonal flu cases this year

Flu season typically begins in October or November. Unless the deceased were tested for the Chinese virus, how do they know they didn't die from it instead?

China could easily have been sending symptom free workers infected with the virus to the US to spread it and only recently has it been identified.