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Comment by SlowRobotAhead | Hacker News Reader

>That was easy wasn't it.

Was it?

I don’t get it. I found that there so far have been covid 234,133 deaths [0] and season flu can cause up to 646,000 deaths [1].

So I’m not seeing 9x to 44x by any reasonable metric or projection. What am I missing?

If 9 to 44x is possible, there need to be models that would show that. Does anyone have a model that shows we aren’t even remotely near peak deaths?

Even if the article is right and seasonal flu was vastly over reported by the CDC as a “for your own good” tactic, I’m STILL not seeing 9x to 44x.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1087466/covid19-cases-re...

[1] https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=2...

EDIT: Article uses worst week covid compared to worst week flu... talk about Apples to Oranges!?

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> What am I missing?

It's right there in your comment:

> so far

(Also, the rest of the paragraph that 9-44x number comes from:)

> To do this, we have to compare counted deaths to counted deaths, not counted deaths to wildly inflated statistical estimates. If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second full week of April to the number of people who died from influenza during the worst week of the past seven flu seasons (as reported to the CDC), we find that the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu.

No, I don’t think I am missing that. Which is why I used those words.

I have no doubt covid is worse than flu and have no issue with being more cautious than reckless.

But if you can find me a model that shows we’re no where near peak deaths and are still looking to 9 to 44 times more, I’d like to see that.

Edit: anyone? Sources? Models?

The finding that in like periods in April this year compared to previous years Covid-19 has killed from 9 to 44 times as many people is a historical fact, not a projection. As for peak deaths, the number of people dying each day is still going up. We don’t need a fancy statistical model to tell us this means we haven’t reached peak deaths yet.

Do you think it’s legitimate to take covid single worst week, compare to a week of flu and extrapolate our 9 to 44x worse?

Do you think there will be 10-30 million covid deaths this year?

It's not comparing it to 'a' week of flu, it's comparing it to the single worst week of flu in the last 7 years. I think it's one useful and relevant data point to see how Covid-19 deaths compare to flu, which of course is far from telling the whole story.

I have no idea what the world is going to do over the next 8 months, or what effect it's going to have. Do you?

> I found that there so far have been covid 234,133 deaths [0] and season flu can cause up to 646,000 deaths [1].

How are you counting covid-19 deaths? You're counting the people who had a test, were confirmed positive for covid-19, who then died.

How are you counting flu deaths? You're looking at people who had a test and were positive for flu, but you're also including people who had flu like symptoms but no test. And you're looking at excess mortality and seeing what strains of flu were circulating. And you plug all this into a formula and a number drops out the other end.

If you only count confirmed deaths you'll see much larger numbers for covid-19 deaths. If you use the same excess mortality method you'd again see much larger figure for covid-19 deaths.

But this way of comparing confirmed covid-19 deaths against statistical modelling for flu gives a misleading impression: that flu and covid are mostly similar. They're really not, many more people are dying from covid-19.

“I’m counting” deaths by the sources I linked.

The article is figuring 9x-44x worse by taking the worst week of covid and comparing to same week of seasonal flu.

I’ll rephrase my original downvoted question, do you think there will be 10-30* million deaths of covid this year? If not - then the 9x-44x is total bullshit.

You likely won't because of the actions people are taking, so there won't be as many people who actually get the disease. There were nearly 200 thousand confirmed deaths from Covid-19 worldwide in April, and that's with much of the world under lockdown. There would be many many more without the lockdown.

Can you find a single source anywhere that modeled or even causally expected 10 to 30 million deaths without lockdown?

Edit: can’t reply directly, but I’d like to see something more than an alarmist article from March 8th. Maybe a recent study? Maybe ANY projection that supports the claim? On March 8th we didn’t know most people that get it will remain asymptomatic.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/public-health-expert-warn...

If you expect 60% of the world to get it and it has a 1% fatality rate that's 46.8 million deaths.

edit:Professor Gabriel Leung, chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, is an expert on coronavirus epidemics and played a key role during the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003.

It wasn't an alarmist article, it's an article about a projection by Professor Gabriel Leung. I'm going to be honest, at this point I don't think you're going to accept anything, and I don't feel like wasting my time.

> at this point I don't think you're going to accept anything

Oh, no, don’t make that mistake. I am definitely open minded. I can no more predict the future than you.

I just want to confirm you think that there will be 10-30 million Covid19 deaths this year based on a projection a guy made on March 8th and then taking the worst/peak week of covid and extrapolating that out.

That is your position, correct?

It really doesn't matter what my position is. I'm nobody. I've looked at what people who do have actual knowledge on the subject and formed my opinion on the matter, but my opinion is quite literally not relevant to anyone but myself.

You're missing how many people have gotten infected and where. If a region has not yet had substantial transmission of the coronavirus, then it won't have many deaths. This would also be like saying in August, "the flu has only killed 100 people, I guess the flu won't be very deadly this year."

Approximately 0.25% of NYC's entire population has died of COVID, which is significantly more than die of the seasonal flu.

What region doesn’t have it? What model shows we aren’t near peak death now?

Edit: seriously asking questions.

I'm not sure if you're being wilfully ignorant at this point. There are 3.3 million confirmed cases world wide, in a population of 7.8 billion. Say they've missed 90% of cases, and we're actually at like 100 million cases, that's still only 1% of the world that has it. Massive regions like India, Africa don't have it.

Are we going to see 9-40 times more deaths this season from those regions?

all of africa has 1663 deaths, and india has 1154. So yes likely.

The origional question was:

>I don’t get it. I found that there so far have been covid 234,133 deaths [0] and season flu can cause up to 646,000 deaths [1].

9-44x is 6-28 million covid deaths this year. Is this the number you think is likely?

> What region doesn’t have it?

Different regions have been infected to different degrees; in the worst hit areas like New York City up to 25% of the population may have caught it by now, but in many (most?) regions less than 1% of the population has been exposed so far.

> What model shows we aren’t near peak death now?

The question is, "What are you modeling?" Are you modeling what happens if the pandemic is contained at this point, and infection rates stay constant, or are you modeling a fast or slow spread to "herd immunity" (currently estimated at 85% of the population catching it)? In some situations, sure, it's almost over, in others, holy shit, it hasn't really started yet, this is the calm before the storm.

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