Coronavirus Outbreak

[Ken]

I read a Wall Street Journal article yesterday with a team of leading epidemiologists who said it is too early to pin down death rates, but they estimated the global death toll range at somewhere between a few 10s of thousands (far less than the annual flu) and 10 million (worst-case scenario) - before vaccines ultimate begin to cut into the spread sometime next year. The truth will likely be somewhere in between - worth taking serious precautions both individually and governmentally - not worth panicking over.

To put it in perspective, each year globally about 500,000 people die from both the flu and another 500,000 from malaria.

Flu is a little bit deceptive. For the most part it doesn't kill healthy people. The great majority of flu deaths are very old people who are already severely sick with emphysema, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases and who do not have long to live anyway. The flu is kind of just the final trigger. And, in many many cases it is just the convenient label to put down on paper for a patient with multiple chronic problems. Most of these patients never have any sort of pathology done to determine why exactly they died.

[Josh]

Flu is a little bit deceptive. For the most part it doesn't kill healthy people. The great majority of flu deaths are very old people who are already severely sick with emphysema, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases and who do not have long to live anyway. The flu is kind of just the final trigger. And, in many many cases it is just the convenient label to put down on paper for a patient with multiple chronic problems. Most of these patients never have any sort of pathology done to determine why exactly they died.

COVID-19 is basically the same thing - it tends to kill older people who were already at risk anyway. There's some debate that cases are being under-reported since old people typically die of things like pneumonia anyway and may not be being tested post-mortem.

[Robert]

Flu is a little bit deceptive. For the most part it doesn't kill healthy people. The great majority of flu deaths are very old people who are already severely sick with emphysema, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases and who do not have long to live anyway. The flu is kind of just the final trigger. And, in many many cases it is just the convenient label to put down on paper for a patient with multiple chronic problems. Most of these patients never have any sort of pathology done to determine why exactly they died.

As Josh already pointed out, covid-19 has the same basic affect and rate of death as the flu. I have heard no screams of pandemic about the flu.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leadin ... -death.htm

[Josh]

Several of those (nephritis, diabetes, heart disease, and to a limited degree, cancer) are strongly related to lifestyle. One of the key differences with influenza and COVID-19 is that they are less linked to lifestyle.

In any case, not enough people die of influenza that we don't really think about it, and usually the diagnosis comes to us as yet another old person dying of pneumonia. It's normal for elderly people to die, so it does not alarm us.

I suspect in the long term, COVID-19 will be the same way. Even so, there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about what endemic COVID-19 would be like.

[Josh]

Then why are younger and middle aged health professionals in contact with infected patients, dying from COVID-19?

There aren't that many who are dying, and they have repeated contact with multiple people who are infected.

It looks like this (this data may be a week or two stale):

80+ years old 15 - 20 %
70-79 years old 8.0%
60-69 years old 3.6%
50-59 years old 1.3%
40-49 years old 0.4%
30-39 years old 0.2%
20-29 years old 0.2%
10-19 years old 0.2%
0-9 years old no fatalities

It sharply affects the elderly, just like past similar diseases.

[MichaelPA]

Flu is a little bit deceptive. For the most part it doesn't kill healthy people. The great majority of flu deaths are very old people who are already severely sick with emphysema, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases and who do not have long to live anyway. The flu is kind of just the final trigger. And, in many many cases it is just the convenient label to put down on paper for a patient with multiple chronic problems. Most of these patients never have any sort of pathology done to determine why exactly they died.

As Josh already pointed out, covid-19 has the same basic affect and rate of death as the flu. I have heard no screams of pandemic about the flu.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leadin ... -death.htm

The death rate of flu is 0.01 percent, while the death rate of the coronavirus is estimated to be 3.4 percent. That is much worse than the flu.

[Josh]

Except way more people get the flu, or diseases like RSV, which seems to have hit 100% this year for ages 0 - 2.

[MichaelPA]

Oops, the death rate of flu is actually 0.1 percent, not 0.01 percent.

[MichaelPA]

Except way more people get the flu, or diseases like RSV, which seems to have hit 100% this year for ages 0 - 2.

Well, coronavirus is more contagious than the flu, so more people should get it eventually.

[Josh]

Except way more people get the flu, or diseases like RSV, which seems to have hit 100% this year for ages 0 - 2.

Well, coronavirus is more contagious than the flu, so more people should get it eventually.

Are you sure about that? Flu outbreaks are pretty bad and have an R0 that ranges from 2 to 3. They can afflict a large proportion of the population. The coronavirus R0 is not well known but is believed to be around 2.2.