Posted on 03/18/2020 8:23:20 PM PDT by Hojczyk
While everyone is in a panic about the coronavirus (officially renamed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization), there's an even deadlier virus many people are forgetting about: the flu.
Flu season is hitting its stride right now in the US. So far, the CDC has estimated (based on weekly influenza surveillance data) that at least 12,000 people have died from influenza between Oct. 1, 2019 through Feb. 1, 2020, and the number of deaths may be as high as 30,000.
The CDC also estimates that up to 31 million Americans have caught the flu this season, with 210,000 to 370,000 flu sufferers hospitalized because of the virus.
That doesn’t mean Americans don’t need to worry about the flu. In their guide to preventing coronavirus, the CDC recommends getting a flu vaccine and taking everyday preventive steps to help stop the spread of germs (such as avoiding close contact with people who are sick, covering your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing, washing your hands often, and cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces at home, work or school—especially when someone is ill). It’s also important to take flu antivirals if they’re prescribed to you.
The fact that people are more concerned about COVID-19 than the flu virus is no surprise, says Dr. Adalja. “Anytime there is a new emerging infectious disease that is shrouded in mystery with a lot of unknowns, it captivates people in a way that a regular virus that people deal with on a yearly basis won’t,” he says.
(Excerpt) Read more at health.com ...
Does the CDC really have a clue???
I am beginning to think they panicked
Really? You are still pedaling this flu bro stuff?
Good luck.
The flu numbers are flat-out guesses. Basically, they take a huge chunk of the pneumonia deaths and assign them to the flu. Deaths actually tested for the flu virus complex are in the hundreds a year. Whereas every single coronavirus death so far has in fact been tested for the coronavirus.
There are people who disagree with the CDC’s annual flu estimate methodology. I think the biggest issue is that many of the people who died from other causes that the CDC assigned to the flu may not have needed ventilators (for oxygen), which is why Italy was completely unprepared, equipment-wise and had to resort to triage, i.e. denying oxygen to the elderly with pre-existing conditions. Given that human beings can survive for 3 minutes at best without oxygen, this was a death sentence for many coronavirus patients with pneumonia.
The CDC website states what has become commonly accepted and widely reported in the lay and scientific press: annually “about 36 000 [Americans] die from flu” (www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease.htm) and “influenza/pneumonia” is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States (www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm). But why are flu and pneumonia bundled together? Is the relationship so strong or unique to warrant characterizing them as a single cause of death? David Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Health Services, said, “People don’t necessarily die, per se, of the [flu] virus—the viraemia. What they die of is a secondary pneumonia. So many of these pneumonias are not viral pneumonias but secondary [pneumonias].” But Dr Rosenthal agreed that the flu/pneumonia relationship was not unique. For instance, a recent study (JAMA 2004;292: 1955-60[Abstract/Free Full Text]) found that stomach acid suppressing drugs are associated with a higher risk of community acquired pneumonia, but such drugs and pneumonia are not compiled as a single statistic. CDC states that the historic 1968-9 “Hong Kong flu” pandemic killed 34 000 Americans. At the same time, CDC claims 36 000 Americans annually die from flu. What is going on?
Meanwhile, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), “influenza and pneumonia” took 62 034 lives in 2001—61 777 of which were attributed to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was flu virus positively identified. Between 1979 and 2002, NCHS data show an average 1348 flu deaths per year (range 257 to 3006). The NCHS data would be compatible with CDC mortality estimates if about half of the deaths classed by the NCHS as pneumonia were actually flu initiated secondary pneumonias. But the NCHS criteria indicate otherwise: “Cause-of-death statistics are based solely on the underlying cause of death... defined by WHO as `the disease or injury which initiated the train of events leading directly to death.’” In a written statement, CDC media relations responded to the diverse statistics: “Typically, influenza causes death when the infection leads to severe medical complications.” And as most such cases “are never tested for virus infection...CDC considers these [NCHS] figures to be a very substantial undercounting of the true number of deaths from influenza. Therefore, the CDC uses indirect modelling methods to estimate the number of deaths associated with influenza.” CDC’s model calculated an average annual 36 155 deaths from influenza associated underlying respiratory and circulatory causes (JAMA 2003;289: 179-86[Abstract/Free Full Text]). Less than a quarter of these (8097) were described as flu or flu associated underlying pneumonia deaths. Thus the much publicised figure of 36 000 is not an estimate of yearly flu deaths, as widely reported in both the lay and scientific press, but an estimate—generated by a model—of flu-associated death. William Thompson of the CDC’s National Immunization Program (NIP), and lead author of the CDC’s 2003 JAMA article, explained that “influenza-associated mortality” is “a statistical association between deaths and viral data available.” He said that an association does not imply an underlying cause of death: “Based on modelling, we think it’s associated. I don’t know that we would say that it’s the underlying cause of death.” Yet this stance is incompatible with the CDC assertion that the flu kills 36 000 people a year—a misrepresentation that is yet to be publicly corrected. Before 2003 CDC said that 20 000 influenza-associated deaths occurred each year. The new figure of 36 000 reported in the January 2003 JAMA paper is an estimate of influenza-associated mortality over the 1990s. Keiji Fukuda, a flu researcher and a co-author of the paper, has been quoted as offering two possible causes for this 80% increase: “One is that the number of people older than 65 is growing larger...The second possible reason is the type of virus that predominated in the 1990s [was more virulent].” However, the 65-plus population grew just 12% between 1990 and 2000. And if flu virus was truly more virulent over the 1990s, one would expect more deaths. But flu deaths recorded by the NCHS were on average 30% lower in the 1990s than the 1980s.
At the 2004 “National Influenza Vaccine Summit,” co-sponsored by CDC and the American Medical Association, Glen Nowak, associate director for communications at the NIP, spoke on using the media to boost demand for the vaccine. One step of a “Seven-Step `Recipe’ for Generating Interest in, and Demand for, Flu (or any other) Vaccination” occurs when “medical experts and public health authorities publicly...state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)—and urge influenza vaccination” (www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/36/2004_flu_nowak.pdf). Another step entails “continued reports...that influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people, helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.” Preceding the summit, demand had been low early into the 2003 flu season. “At that point, the manufacturers were telling us that they weren’t receiving a lot of orders for vaccine for use in November or even December,” recalled Dr Nowak on National Public Radio. “It really did look like we needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot.” If flu is in fact not a major cause of death, this public relations approach is surely exaggerated. Moreover, by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased. Until corrected and until unbiased statistics are developed, the chances for sound discussion and public health policy are limited.
I am a pediatrician and this propaganda affects my practice directly.
Kenneth Stoller
International Hyperbaric Medical Association]
These are estimates because only a few hundred cases per year are tested specifically for flu viruses. The methodology assigns the flu as a cause for a certain number of pneumonia-related deaths. The multiplier used is literally 100x the number of cases tested (i.e. with tissue samples sent to testing labs) specifically for the flu. Whereas every recorded covid-19 death has been tested specifically for the specific viral complex. It’s possible that many deaths recorded as flu-related at the end of the year will actually be covid-19 related.
CDC flu death estimate methodology:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm
“Anytime there is a new emerging infectious disease that is shrouded in mystery with a lot of unknowns, it captivates people in a way that a regular virus that people deal with on a yearly basis won’t,”
That’s a bit unfair. Imagine walking in a forest in the middle of a pitch-black night. You tread slowly and carefully, because you don’t what’s out there. “Ignorant” doesn’t mean “irrational”, it just means a lack of knowledge. Lacking knowledge, it’s rational to take extra care.
Numbers can be cooked. A person with end stage renal disease who dies from the flu will have on their death certificate influenza secondary to renal failure. Do you list this as a renal death or a flu death?
They lie about the flu every year. They just make up a number, which includes pneumonia deaths.
The CDC is a Bureaucracy not a race car and the motto seems to be “Why develop a cure in a short time, when you can do it in a lonnnnng time”
No sense of urgency as they are not built for speed but job protection and Procedures that are arcane and archaic and disallows any other participants in their domain.
National Emergency exposed them for who they are and things are happening a lot faster. Trump put this in their hands to go through their “system” and it became quickly apparent they have no sense of urgency, policy and procedures were not designed for it
Now they have no choice and a fire has been lit under them and what they had before must and will change, forever
Vote Democrat and you can count on tier model staying in place
Choose...
But do so wisely, your very lives depend on it
Now and into the future
Sic Semper Tyrranis
The "cure" to stop the spread of this virus, which causes a flu, will damage economy and nation more than the bug itself.
What happens to the small businesses that shut down and can't pay their bills? What happens when this nonsense is lifted and people don't have their jobs to go back to? What happens when this all turns out to be just another part of life that we deal with already and have in the past?
Within a couple of months, this will all be forgotten and we'll look back and ask, "What were we thinking?"
This reminds me of the mass hysteria over climate change and the imminent demise of the world as we know it if we don't do something RIGHT NOW to stop it. Intelligent people aren't taking a bite off that apple and we'll be just fine.
So why are they taking a bite of this coronavirus apple and panicking like we're all going to die if we don't shut everything down right now?
The numbers so far don't support the extreme measures being put in place to stop this virus. It's overkill and will cause more damage to our economy, lives and society than the illness itself and loss of life will. So far, 80% of the people contracting this virus have survived.
Instead of forcing everyone to stay away from other people everywhere in society, we should be focusing on keeping the bug from getting into nursing homes and senior centers and other places where the people who are the most vulnerable are.
How many required a respirator in the ICU before they died?
3,287 people die a DAY in the U S from traffic fatalities
Perhaps that’s down the last few weeks since we’re coupled up in our homes ~ but that’s a big number!
And they suck at ‘guessing’ which strains are coming the next year, making the vaccines largely ineffective to what we really face.
Should read, “So far, 90% of the people contracting this virus have survived.”
Only 38% of the known cases have survived it. It got up to 56% March 8th and 9th, but now it is back down. Outside of China and Iran the number is currently at 6.8%. The remainder are either dead or still sick.
3,287 people die a DAY in the U S from traffic fatalities
Why respirators? Why not a ten-man sealed tent outdoors filled with oxygen?
Just think of the grant-money spent on global warming...
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