Facebook Removes Trump Post Falsely Saying Flu is More Lethal Than Covid (cnn.com) 468
Facebook on Tuesday removed a post from President Trump in which he falsely claimed that Covid-19 is less deadly than the seasonal flu. From a report: Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the company removed the post for breaking its rules on Covid-19 misinformation. President Trump has, by his own admission, played down the threat of Covid-19. Now, while battling his own bout of the disease, he has continued to dishonestly downplay the severity of the virus. His post on Tuesday falsely equated Covid-19 to the seasonal flu. Twitter has shielded the post with a label and is preventing users from retweeting the post.
Doctors HATES him! (Score:5, Funny)
How to beat corona virus with one simple trick.
Re:Doctors HATES him! (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, his statement is correct.. ..if the audience consists entirely of preteens. COVID-19 overtakes influenza in mortality rates in the early teens, and the difference grows with increasing age
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There are known treatments for influenza and a vaccine. So far there are experimental treatments and no vaccine for Covid. ....
It really isn't a fair comparison to compare
That's my point. People had a long time to develop an immune response to survive the flu. And those that didn’t might have died from flu already and can’t die again.
Covid just showed up. It might be less deadly than the flu once it has been around for a few years. Maybe the vulnerable get wiped out in two years and others are quite safe. Maybe not. We don't know.
Getting air lifted to a custom hospital (Score:5, Informative)
My other forums are full of folks saying things along the theme of "My Gran had to go to the ER 3 times before they'd get admitted to a hospital, f*** this guy".
Even before Trump's diagnosis the difficulty of getting admitted when you're not actively dying has been a common complaint. And he goes on TV to laud the care he's gotten that is completely out of reach for most Americans.
Chris Christie's the same way. He checks himself into a hospital "just in case". If I tried that they'd tell me to go f*** myself.
Re:Getting air lifted to a custom hospital (Score:5, Insightful)
And top top it off, he's still trying to kill what little chance of actual healthcare many Americans might have.
Adding insult to injury, HE got the benefits of socialized medicine, no bill for him.
And the cherry on top, he apparently learned NOTHING from this, in spite of having hosted a super-spreader event.
Re:Getting air lifted to a custom hospital (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump isn't out of it yet though. Remember that Boris Johnson tested positive, he stated that he only experienced mild symptoms and was self isolating, then a week later reported he had a mild temperature so was still isolating, then 2 days later was hospitalized, then one day later was in intensive care.
Now on the other hand, Trump could be right. We might all be perfectly fine if we all get experimental drugs and Walter Reed Hospital adds a million more beds so we all get the same quality of care. He can tell us to stop fearing covid all he wants, but that doesn't bring anyone back from the dead.
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set up only for you when you're undergoing mild symptoms and then getting multiple experimental treatments administered carefully and with intense scrutiny is one simple trick!
You're assuming he had only mild symptoms. They took him to hospital on Friday because they couldn't be sure he could walk to the chopper on Saturday.
And I severely doubt he went from his first positive test Thursday night to needing oxygen Friday. He only "tested positive" when he got bad enough that they knew it would go public. I'd put even money on it eventually coming out that he tested positive (or people at least suspected he was sick) before the debate.
Pretty much everywhere (Score:3)
Hell, do a little googling and you'll find cases of poor or homeless patients being dumped in the cold outside bus stops when they couldn't pay. It was a minor scandal for a bit since there was a slow news cycle and the media covered it.
Re:Getting air lifted to a custom hospital (Score:5, Insightful)
Just curious what part of the US you live where you can't get admitted to a hospital if you need for covid tx?
Oh, no place major. Just Philadelphia [eurekalert.org]. Oh, and New Orleans [propublica.org]. And Starr County, Tx [star-telegram.com], and New York [townhall.com], Houston [houstonchronicle.com], DC [wtop.com] ... Do I need to go on?
Best part is when they're sent home w/o testing (Score:3)
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compare and contrast (Score:5, Funny)
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Everbody missed a snappy description back when they were arguing about the name...Covfefe-19 has a great ring to it.
End Game? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can someone please explain to me (someone outside of the USA) what the point of downplaying this is? We know from statistics that it is more deadly than the seasonal flu. I mean just about every other world leader took the path of "better safe than sorry" right from the start (the Chinese were literally welding people into their homes). I'm sure I'm not the only world citizen who doesn't understand what is to gain by downplaying it. Is there some kind of nuanced American political agenda that we don't understand going on here?
Isn't it more politically expedient to over-react and be able to tell people you were just looking out for their best interests if you are wrong, rather than brush it off and then live every day propping up a narrative that is more and more out of sync with reality? I'm seriously interested in understanding what specifically it is about American politics that would make the second option a better or even a tempting choice?
Re:End Game? (Score:5, Informative)
Can someone please explain to me (someone outside of the USA) what the point of downplaying this is? ... I'm seriously interested in understanding what specifically it is about American politics that would make the second option a better or even a tempting choice?
The president is trying to get re-elected. His handling of the pandemic in the USA is a central topic of the election on Nov. 3. By trying to convince his population that the virus is trivial, he can push for more re-opening of business, increased hiring, a better economy more generally. He thinks this will improve his chances of winning a second term. He considers expendable anyone who would become sick and die from greater infections of covid in furtherance of this plan.
That's my best read on it.
Re:End Game? (Score:5, Funny)
I agree with you analysis.
If Mr. Trump is so worried about his image, he should lose some weight, get a haircut, pay his taxes and stop spraying himself orange.
Re:End Game? (Score:5, Funny)
I agree with you analysis.
If Mr. Trump is so worried about his image, he should lose some weight, get a haircut, pay his taxes and stop spraying himself orange.
But that would alienate the orange, fat, tax-evading, comb-overs in his base. #hair-club-for-men-Garfields
[ Disclaimer: I don't know if they love lasagna and/or hate Mondays. ]
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The part you're missing is he could just address (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump & his party have refused to do that. Even in an election year. And after watching them instantly flip flop on Supreme Court nominees less than 60 days out from an election we can't pretend they stand on principle.
We should start questioning why they're so reluctant to help people during an election year...
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He doesn't actually care if the economy is in the toilet with businesses failing left and right, he just wants to create the illusion of a recovery long enough to sucker people into voting him a second term. Then the country can go to hell while he crows the typical "I got mine, FUCK YOU!" that we have come to expect from his kind.
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Except he can't. People are *afraid* to be in public right now, and nothing the president could possibly ever say or do can change that.
He can try and paint this however he wants, but you can't hide the fact that people are dying in numbers that are worrying to the general public. The only thing that is going to make a difference is when this is over, an
Re:End Game? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump is a one-trick pony. When his flim-flam doesn't work any more, he has no other tactics to employ. That's why he doubles down on the flim-flam.
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He evidently knew how serious it was in February and deliberately downplayed it evidently so as to not cause a panic.
I don't think he 'downplayed' anything; he deliberately lied about it hoping that he'd be rescued by the very doctors and scientists he was belittling to his cult members.
Calling it a Democrat hoax, making masks a partisan issue, trying to limit testing... well, you get the idea. His handling of this epidemic looks nothing like trying to prevent panic and everything like living in a bubble where only the adoration of his cult is important to him.
Re:End Game? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget that WHO waited until March 13 to declare an pandemic.
WHO declared a PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY of international concern on the 30th of January. From that point forward nobody can blame the WHO for failing to sound the alarm. The only thing weaker and more pathetic than blaming the WHO is making an argument the US has to rely on an international bureaucracy to tell it something there is no excuse for it not already knowing (and indeed did know) themselves.
Re:End Game? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:End Game? (Score:5, Insightful)
To own the Libs. He thinks by opposing the Libs it will energize his base and get him reelected.
There is not a single position by the Libs that he will publicly acknowledge or agree with. Any bipartisan cooperation was deliberately tossed out the window 4 years ago and its now an "us vs them".
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No, it's Trump versus them. There is no "us" in Trump. It's a one man show, and anyone who disagrees is fired.
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It's about controlling our government (Score:3, Interesting)
The goal here is to discourage people from taking part in government, that way the Republicans can exercise control of it themselves. This puts the Republican party in a bind, because the only way to respond to a 100 year global pandemic
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Yup. He could have done several things that would have put him in a very strong position in the election.
He could have denounced the racism at Charlottesville forcefully and unambiguously, it was a moment designed for a great speech and he had plenty of people on his staff willing to write such a speech, but Trump is a one man band and fumbles through everything on his own. Sure, he *has* denouned racist groups over and over, and his supporters do keep pointing this out and I do agree that it happens. Bu
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Narcissism. Just like how he made the BLM movement all about him, even though it he could have rallied behind the movement and swayed many liberal voters to his side.
President Trump is undoubtedly NPD, that much is clear, and I would guess probably Type III. But I also think his behavioral traits go well beyond narcissism, especially the incompetence and irresponsibility, neither attributable to narcissism, but telltale symptoms of sociopathy.
Re:End Game? (Score:4, Interesting)
It hurts the economy tremendously. Thus if your focus is economical and financial, you would prefer for people to get back to their normal lives. There are studies showing that people are dying of other non-COVID causes, due to the measures attempting to prevent COVID deaths. Depression in the USA is up threefold due to the anti-covid measures (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2770146):
These findings suggest that prevalence of depression symptoms in the US was more than 3-fold higher during COVID-19 compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals with lower social resources, lower economic resources, and greater exposure to stressors (eg, job loss) reported a greater burden of depression symptoms. Post–COVID-19 plans should account for the probable increase in mental illness to come, particularly among at-risk populations.
A significant number of people did not seek out medical help for their pre-existing chronic diseases due to COVID quarantine, and there is an unknown number of deaths that occurred because of this.
My wife runs the mammogram department at a local small hospital. On average they detect one cancerous tumor per month in their relatively small sampling of patients (maybe a couple hundred per month). Since that non-critical department was shut down for several months, it is statistically sound to state that the detection of cancer in at least a few women was delayed by *months*. Extrapolate that across the entire country. There will be more deaths from breast cancer, and ALL cancers, in the upcoming months and years due to this.
There is evidence already, and numerous epidemiologists have stated, that COVID immunity will not be long-lasting, nor will a vaccine be 100% effective. It is expected to have flu-like seasonal flare ups for the indefinite future.
For all the above reasons, it can be argued that the "cure" could be potentially worse than the disease, when talking about government response to COVID and the various mandates in force by federal and state government. It is also a sound scientific fact that humankind will adjust to COVID naturally and develop immunity without societal, governmental or epidemiological intervention. I'm not trying to make the case that we should not combat COVID. However, only time will tell if government actions caused more problems than they solved (IE lives saved).
Re:End Game? (Score:5, Informative)
That argument makes complete sense. But America chose yet a different road than what either of you are saying:
America's problem is that a half-assed Covid response is worse economically than a full shut down, and than no shutdown at all, because Covid never comes under control, so businesses stay closed longer, and the government must provide economic relief packages for longer. Trump's middling approach to masks means that half of American citizens are not wearing masks so the infection rate remains high. It's like he found the worst possible approach that maximizes the disadvantage of both options.
Side-note: they are letting non-violent offenders out of jail to avoid spreading Covid in the jail system. So it isn't just businesses that are hurt, law enforcement is too.
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The election is the key here. He's been accused of mismanaging the covid crisis, so if he can make some people believe that he's done a good job he could win the election. Part of that plan is to convince people that covid is not a big deal, that it's just a world wide liberal plot to get him out of office.
However, Trump is all over the board on this. He thinks it is serious, then he claims it isn't, and back and forth. This may be him just pandering to the right people at the right time, or he really d
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Sure. In most of the world a bustling economy is good, but only one factor in prosperity. People don't have quite as much money as in the US on average, but it's more evenly spread, certain important systems, like health care, are much more efficient, and factors other than income are often quite a bit better. I would definitely prefer to live in most of the OECD (and do) rather than the US.
The US has spent the last seventy years or so optimizing GDP. By pretty much any other metric of prosperity the US is
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Can someone please explain to me (someone outside of the USA) what the point of downplaying this is? We know from statistics that it is more deadly than the seasonal flu. I mean just about every other world leader took the path of "better safe than sorry" right from the start (the Chinese were literally welding people into their homes). I'm sure I'm not the only world citizen who doesn't understand what is to gain by downplaying it. Is there some kind of nuanced American political agenda that we don't understand going on here?
Isn't it more politically expedient to over-react and be able to tell people you were just looking out for their best interests if you are wrong, rather than brush it off and then live every day propping up a narrative that is more and more out of sync with reality? I'm seriously interested in understanding what specifically it is about American politics that would make the second option a better or even a tempting choice?
Remember the "marshmallow test"? [wikipedia.org]
Well Trump would certainly fail.
He reacts to whatever the current stimulus is and doesn't think much beyond that. It makes great TV, but it doesn't work well when you're leading a country.
From the moment COVID became a story Trump has been thinking "how can I make it a smaller story today" and "how can I improve my poll numbers today", not "how can I improve my poll numbers when people actually go out to vote".
A Chinese style "screw civil liberties" style lockdown would have
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Among people who develop symptoms, it appears that COVID19 is *WAY* more lethal than even the most virulent flu.
To be fair, however, as we are learning more about the illness constantly, we are getting better at treating it, and the fatality rate per infected person does seem to be slowly dropping.
If the fatality rate continues along the (curved) trajectory it has shown so far, I believe it should be no more serious than an average flu by about this time next year (which can still be lethal, but is som
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When you cough or sneeze, the velocity of the droplets from your mouth is fast enough that although most are stopped, a lot will still get through and could travel some distance away.
It still reduces the amount (volume) of emitted droplets and their velocity, both of which reduce the probability that someone nearby inhales enough viral matter to become sick.
Of course, that doesn't mean that it's a good idea to go to work while symptomatic (suspected or known) with Covid-19. But we do have the case of the two hairdressers that went on with their jobs while symptomatic, wearing cotton face masks, without infecting any of their 139 customers. (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e
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That group is everyone. So many people die in car accidents that, were we to solve that, you would be screaming about the invonvenience at not being allowed to drive anywhere or goods delivered as you expect.
Everything in life is about compromise. People die all the time every day, we only try to minimise that in measured ways.
Re:End Game? (Score:4, Insightful)
The end game is all about the stock market, as it is the only thing about Trumps presidency that looks good.
Having to close businesses is bad for stocks, and this being an election year and arguably being the only positive thing about his term, he wants it look good for the upcoming election. So he has done everything he can to downplay the virus in hopes of keeping the stock market at record level highs.
Noting, of course, that the Stock Market is not the Economy.
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No. Actually the reverse.
We don't have accurate counts for deaths due to flu. If we measured COVID deaths the same way as we measure seasonal flu deaths, the count would be significantly higher.
What's new? (Score:2)
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-1 Flamebait (Score:3)
How did this -1 Flamebait article ever get posted to the frontpage on Slashdot?
Still accessible (Score:5, Insightful)
You can still read the tweet. Otherwise the line between revisionism and managing misinformation would get quite blurry... Here's the text:
"Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!"
Let's fact check it:
1. "Flu season is coming up!". Check.
2. "Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu". In the US? The world? And within which timeframe should we look for "sometimes"? If we suppose he means the US and "sometimes" is about once per decade, then the statement is FALSE. According to CDC data that go back to 2010, the US hasn't seen 100k flu deaths within a flu season.
3. "Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it". You learned to live with a disease for which ther *is* a vaccine, albeight not compulsory. So there's that. Any discussion about the lethality of each disease is moot since we won't be comparing equals. The flu deaths are kept in check.
4. "in most populations far less lethal!!!". Probably true, but misleading. With the flu, if you're in a critical demographic group you get your vaccine and hope for the best, but you can at least do something. With Covid-19 hoping for the best is the only thing you can do right now.
Also, Streisand Effect much? After this the post will get much more visibility. I just hope it will also get more scrutiny.
Re:Still accessible (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Still accessible (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus we just don't test for flu after people die unless it was specifically due to flu symptoms.
Very true! Even living people who have flu- or cold-like symptoms are far less likely to go to their doctor to get a swab test to find out exactly what kind of flu or cold virus they have than to simply go to the nearest drugstore and pick up some OTC drugs to deal with the symptoms.
We've "come to live with" these other flu variants, which may have the exact same level of mortality, but with less specific testing to verify.
Color me unsurprised (Score:3)
Facebook has had a nasty dose of TDS for a long time.
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This isn't medical advice, and it is fairly easy to be an arbiter of a blatant lie like this one.
Buzz off, troll.
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Don't post provably false horse shit, and your posts don't get deleted.
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Informative)
You are using a large estimate for number of total cases which is the largest anyone has estimated, while using only confirmed deaths. The problem with that ratio should be obvious. To use the US example, we've had about 210,000 official COVID deaths, but excess mortality indicates far more deaths https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm [cdc.gov]. So functionally, you are using the largest possible estimate for COVID cases, the smallest possible death rate for COVID, and then you are comparing it to what is very likely an overly high estimate for influenza deaths given oher data https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504370/ [nih.gov], and then getting that they are about the same.
And that's even before we get into other issues, like COVID having far more long-term complications than regular influenza.
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We are worried about pancreatic cancer. (Score:3)
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Re: Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Interesting)
COVID has killed 210,000 people with a large part of the economy shut down. That number would've been much higher had the economy remained fully open. Even Trump makes that point - he just makes it in the wrong context
Heart disease does its damage with the economy up and running full steam. Heart disease is not contagious. Bringing up this utterly irrelevant figure indicates that you're either operating as an apologist for the administration's piss poor attempts to mitigate the pandemic - or you're one of those (mostly young, healthy) advocates for throwing open the doors to establish herd immunity - on the assumption that you won't be one of the couple of million collateral deaths. Gee, thanks - as a 68 year old covid survivor myself, let me point out that you're an asshole.
The appropriate issue is - had the shutdown been managed better (kept in effect a bit longer, with much greater compliance with mask wearing and distancing as reopening began), would we now be at 210000 dead with the number of cases and deaths still increasing - or 150000 dead with the number approaching zero?
Trump's version of a shutdown was an utter waste of resources - since he only delayed the inevitable. But it was only inevitable in the context of a delusional idea that you could flip a switch and restore his phony "best economy ever", without continuing vigilance to keep the pandemic under control. It has been done. Germany. New Zealand. South Korea. Just not here (or Britain or Spain or Brazil). Trump isn't the only idiot on the world stage - just the least excusable one - given the amount of resources and medical expertise he had at his disposal.
Re: Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Informative)
The number of annual flu deaths in the US, going back to at least 2010, is between 12,000 – 61,000. The number of confirmed deaths from COVID is over 210,000 in just 8 months.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/... [cdc.gov].
Well, the Supreme Court has held that crying "FIRE!" in a crowded theater is not protected speech. It would follow that crying "THERE'S NO FIRE!" in a burning theater is also not protected speech. When the speech is public health advice from a government official, the standard for accuracy should be much higher. This isn't political speech any more.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/su... [cornell.edu]
Re: Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's repeat this. The pandemic has killed about 3.5 times the number of people in the US as the last influenza season. No matter how you try to spin and cherry pick, COVID-19 is far more dangerous than a normal flu season.
Re: Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Informative)
"were going to die anyway of something else, very soon indeed"
If very soon is "within the next 10 years" then you'll find most people have a problem with having their lives be cut short by that amount by something that is avoidable is indeed not acceptable.
These are not people who are already on their death beds.
Waiting to hear the accounting of all the suicides, poverty, lost homes, divorces, child and spousal abuse, etc, caused by the wild overreaction worldwide.
Chances that you genuinely care about any of these causes outside of the context of disagreeing with how virtually every developed nation on earth has chosen to try and reduce the number of cases of COVID from everyone all at once to something lower and more addressable over time: zero. You're just a dumb shithead who confuses being stupid for "having a good perspective" on the matter.
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Thatâ(TM)s not an indication that covid will be more deadly than the flu over time.
The flu can't kill anyone it already killed. How do you know the flu didn't kill most of the people vulnerable to it 5-10 years ago?
Excellent point but why limit yourself to 5-10 years? After all innate and passive immunity passed down over generations have prevented 100% of everyone living today from being killed off by infection. Clearly over long enough time scales having sex and falling out of bed is more deadly than covid.
Yes I'm being sarcastic and no it's not any different from the specious nonsense you are promulgating.
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There was no such mandate in Canada, and yet the average annual deaths in Canada from the flu are around 500-1500 a year, and COVID-19 has killed over 7500 Canadians.
You can't cherry pick your way out of this. COVID-19 is more dangerous than the annual cold and flu season.
Re: Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Informative)
Dying of covid-19 alone isn't that important really. Comorbidity isn't about determine who's at fault in a lawsuit where you say that the driver of the car was 27% at fault. It means that the person would likely have survived except for covid-19. Yes, they had the diabetes and were overweight, but what killed them was covid-19.
If you're comparing death numbers, then the official estimated number of deaths for the flu *does* include comorbidities in the count! No one says "grandma didn't die from the flu, she had comobidities". Everyone compares covid-19 to the flu, but you need to compare them accurately, not choosing the worst fudged numbers for the flu with the best fudged numbers for covid.
Because covid-19 is political, we have political people slicing and dicing the numbers with their ginsu knives to get the results they want.
Facebook and twitter have people who can math (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not even remotely relevant.
In evaluating the COVID death rate in the USA, we're not dealing with past years, when this COVID killed no one. We're dealing with a 12-month period starting from the first case in the USA on January 20th, when this particular COVID arrived. So far, in the US, it's killed over 200,000 people. Our only firm, relevant measure of this COVID outbreak's deadliness is "200,000/year and counting." It's likely to be considerably more, inasmuch as it is showing no significant sign of slowing down and we have quite a bit of time left until January 20th rolls around again.
That will be when we have a relatively final number on the death rate.
The various flus, however, we do have historical data on, and the death rates per year there are known to hover around 30,000 people; which looks like, by the end of the year, will be about 10% of the death rate of this COVID outbreak.
That's the only relevant takeaway: 30,000 for the flu, and 200,000 and counting for COVID.
In the end, the arguments that the flu and this COVID outbreak are comparable, or that the flu kills more people in an outbreak, are either based on ignorance and/or innumeracy, or outright malign intent. Don't be that person. It is not difficult to understand, and people do active harm when they spread the untruth that the death rates are comparable.
Then we have the aftereffects on survivors. That's not looking good either.
Re:Facebook and twitter have people who can math (Score:5, Informative)
And the flu numbers are also estimated, as hospitals do not report these numbers to the CDC, and even if they dead it would only be for cases that occured at a hospital. So there's a formula that is used to estimate total flu deaths given the subset of flu deaths that are actually reported. And that formula has a lower and an upper range. Some people try to use the uppermost range for flu deaths to claim that covid-19 is no worse than the flu, but even then it fails because covid-19 has more deaths in its short time frame than the high estimate from 2019/2020 flu season.
The CDC number I see for total flu deaths in 2019/2020 season is 21,909. So it's even less than your 30,000 estimate, making covid-19 even worse.
Really there's no comparison of flu to covid-19 that makes covid-19 look good. The good news is that mortality does seem to be going down with covid, which is to be expected given that now doctors and hospitals know better what treatments are the most effective. But believe me, if you had a choice to catch the flu or catch covid, you would want the flu. Covid does very bad stuff to the body by all accounts and some patients have long term symptoms persisting months after the virus is no longer detected.
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Even the WHO is now saying that there are a surprisingly few flu cases across the world in the last season, which may indicate we are simply counting a lot of influenza and pneumonia cases into the wrong categories.
I think it's infinitely more likely it means that when people ware masks and social distance they also don't spread diseases that spread in a similiar way to covid like the flu.
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So far, covid-19 has killed more people than the flu has in the past five years combined. And we still have to get through Fall and Winter.
Removing blatantly false information, let's call them lies, is not censorship. If you don't think this should not have been removed then I'm free to post the con artist is a known rapist and launders money for the Russian mob.
Re: Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Interesting)
In the 2019-20 flu season, the influenza virus at most killed 67,000 Americans. Thus far this year, COVID-19 has killed over 200,000. That's the facts. You pretty much have to add up the last four or five flu seasons combined to get the same total deaths from flu.
Re: Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Interesting)
"But influenza has been around for many years and has killed vastly more people."
Strangely enough, in the south hemisphere, where the influenza season comes to an end, influenza cases have been reduced by 99% because of the Corona measures taken.
"Flu in the Southern Hemisphere has 'practically disappeared.' "
https://www.advisory.com/daily... [advisory.com]
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have a hypothesis here that explains how there would be excess deaths that aren't actual COVID deaths?
The only "excess" deaths we're going to find here, are COVID deaths. I'm not looking for "excess" heart attack deaths, I'm looking for the gross absence of heart attacks as compared to previous years, which would confirm the obvious; Greed is doing exactly what you would expect it to do when a grossly mismanaged government is tossing trillions at this problem with about as much financial oversight as massive corruption allows.
Let's put this another way by looking at it at the macro level. You can either believe that US citizenship affects humans at the genetic level, accounting for for roughly 25% of a global pandemic, or you can believe that the US numbers, are wrong. You choose.
That's an awfully short list of options. How about "we didn't take enough preventive measures" or "we had poor support and conflicting messages from our government, because they threw out the plan that previous administrations had created for these circumstances"?
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Insightful)
But keep up the lying. We know the number of deaths is underreported because the con artist refused to get test kits out in February - May so as to keep the number of confirmed cases down. Coroners were begging to get confirmation of a person's death when they exhibited the signs of being infected. If you don't test, you don't have any cases.
Further, we know the CDC, under the watchful eye of HHS, has been changing their numbers to keep the count low. When HHS said everything has to go through them, there was an immediate and recognizable dip in the number of both cases and deaths.
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And what does all of that actually mean? The current US COVID death total could be grossly overexaggerated. Due to nothing more than greed.
Could be? That is speculative. I would love to see more information about this overestimation, and how it plays out in the real world, but pure handwaving is not at all persuasive.
I would also grant more credibility to such claims if the the advocates demonstrated any signs that they are thinking through their own argument. The problem with the comparisons with the flu mortality is that those numbers are pretty loosey goosey, using techniques that are criticized when used to estimate Covid-19 deaths. If
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Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:4, Insightful)
So... you believe the number of confirmed cases is 20x too small and you simultaneously believe that the number of confirmed deaths is 100% correct.
How exactly does it work, that head thing of yours?
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I think I'm beginning to see how it works. Thanks for the demonstration!
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Informative)
The World Health Organization's new estimate that about 760 million people – more than 20 times the confirmed cases – have been infected by the coronavirus worldwide is the impact on the estimated survival rate.
If, indeed, 760 million have been infected at some point during the outbreak and the number of confirmed deaths is about 1 million, the infection fatality rate is only 0.13%.
That's a little more than one-tenth of 1%, which the WHO says is the rate for the seasonal flu.
The US case fatality rate for Covid 19 is 3,7%. For comparisons the case fatality rate for the 1918 influenza pandemic was 2,5% and keep in mind that the 1918 pandemic is hands down the worst influenza outbreak in recent history so Covid 19 is NOT on par with a normal seasonal flu outbreak, Covid 19 is significantly worse. Now somebody is certain to raise the topic of per-capita fatality rate so let's take a look at that, the US has 640 fatalities per 1.000.000 inhabitants, topped only by: Peru, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Spain, Ecuador and Mexico and just to give that figure some scale Japan is at ~12 fatalities per 1.000.000 inhabitants. By any reasonable metric Trump has in every possible way f**ked up the response to this pandemic. It's equivalent to the US being subjected to a sustained strategic bombing offensive and Trump raging against air defences. Trump's utter incompetence will prolong the economic pain of the outbreak far beyond what would have been the case had the ego maniacal buffoon not begun to play the pandemic down, rage against masks and containment measures and motivate every Republican: state assembly, governor, congress person and senator to follow his example.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/arti... [cdc.gov].
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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The US case fatality rate for Covid 19 is 3,7%. For comparisons the case fatality rate for the 1918 influenza pandemic was 2,5%
The case fatality rate (CFR) is not a good metric for comparing pandemics, because the case count - as Orange Man says - depends on how much you test. You need to compare infection fatality rates (IFR), which is estimated to be around 0.5% for Covid-19 with proper health care and around 0.05% for a typical flu season.
The IFR for the 1918 pandemic is not well known; estimates vary between 3% and 20%. The paper from which you got the 2.5% (Taubenberger 2006) is weird, since it states CFR > 2.5%, 500 M infe
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Informative)
I don't actually believe you are stupid enough to think the president was serious or expected to be taken seriously when he said those things.
He sure as hell looked and sounded serious when he said them. On live TV. Direct from the Whitehouse. In front of the entire world.
Reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Maybe you're the one who needs to take a long hard look at your life decisions.
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure this kind of thing goes on all the time at companies where the CEO is more of an expert in the core business and he bounces out apparently nutty ideas because that's kind of what leaders do and why they have experts to tell them "no, it doesn't work like that."
And then they take the advice of those experts, and say that in public.
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow thanks Facebook and Twitter for protecting (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't actually believe you are stupid enough to think the president was serious or expected to be taken seriously when he said those things.
I'm having difficulty determining when I should and should not take the President seriously. Maybe if he says something in a small gathering over dinner, I would totally understand that he wouldn't necessarily be representing his office. If he's in a suit, in front of podium, and being recorded by multiple cameras. Then it is unreasonable to expect anyone to follow any kind of dead pan humor or sarcasm. As for twitter, well that medium is kind of a mess. It's difficult to convey sarcasm through a text medium like a post, and even if executed well it slips by a pretty large number of people. (as we are well aware of on /.)
Pot let me introduce you to Kettle.
There is only one Kettle on the stove at a time. And there are no pots.
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I don't actually believe you are stupid enough to think the president was serious or expected to be taken seriously when he said those things.
No one is stupid enough, that's why they ask Trump repeatedly if he's serious to which he then answers yes. At least until Kayleigh McEnany comes out and dumbsplains away that the president wasn't serious and asked when he was serious was actually joking and still wasn't serious.
Which brings us to an interesting point. A man who apparently "isn't serious" during this time should not at all be the fucking president of the ongoing disaster. If he can't take his job seriously he shouldn't be running his mouth.
Re: interesting fact (Score:2)
Re: interesting fact (Score:2)
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Where are you getting your numbers?
Google says that the UK has had more than 40K COVID deaths this year.
The BMJ says that England & Wales had 340 flu deaths in 2018, which it characterized as a "bad year"
https://www.bmj.com/content/36... [bmj.com]
Re: interesting fact (Score:2)
Re: interesting fact (Score:2)
Re:WHC says it is (Score:5, Informative)
You assume:
A: 10% have probably been infected
B: 1.000.000 confirmed deaths
And conclude a death rate. But your argument rests on the premise that you can multiplying an estimate with a confirmed number and derive a correct rate of deaths. That premise is false and thus you your conclusion is wrong.
It is a disaster that Covid has been made a matter of politics. Given your last question, I assume you are American: You should be afraid of it, because it already has a confirmed death toll of 200.000 thousand with no end in sight.
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Same is true of the flu death estimate (look at the large ranges for cases and deaths ther), so how can you say outright it's inaccurate to claim Covid death rate is less than flu?
Either use confirmed numbers for both or use population based estimates for both. Pick a methodology and be consistent.
Either methodology shows that Covid-19 is vastly more dangerous than influenza.
Trump's numbers make no sense. They are not supposed to make any sense, only convince people who prefer not to think that maybe they can trust the sitting president for a few more weeks.
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In the US:
Flu: 6 months, 24-62k deaths
C19: 7 months, 200k deaths
Looks worse to me.
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These are the plain facts of the matter.
They're plain facts that demonstrate you understand how to lie with statistics.
The numbers you chose for COVID—lowest death count and highest estimated case count—will produce the lowest possible death rate. I.e. You just calculated the floor death rate for COVID, but the actual number is almost certainly higher.
The number you chose for the flu—highest death count and lowest estimated case count—will produce the highest possible death rate. I.e. You just calculated the ceiling death
Re:WHC says it is (Score:4, Informative)
The math is off at least for the US. The death rate from covid for those infected is about 2.8% in the US only if you look at CDC numbers. The CDC mortality numbers for the flu is 1/10 that rate. At the very least, see that in the US we have 209,510 deaths from covid, whereas the previous flu season had 21,909 estimated deaths. That's an order of magnitude difference.
See: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/... [cdc.gov] and https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/... [cdc.gov].
Granted, the flu numbers are estimates only whereas the covid numbers are from actual reported cases. But still, these are the best numbers from the official government experts.
Re:Checking the fact-checkers (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't know this and it's interesting, but you're misrepresenting the Snopes article. They're rating it as "mixture" because even though there is no proof the truck driver was drunk, but several (police) witnesses made that claim or at least hinted at it, and there is no evidence he was not. Binden is just repeating a rumor, and I can't say I blame him - he has a choice between believing his wife messed up and killed his one year old daughter and herself, and badly injured their two sons; or that the truck driver was actually drunk and was to blame. I know what I'd be tempted to believe. The fact that he's only said it out loud twice (and not recently) suggests that he knows that this is a mixture, and only believes it when he needs too for his own mental health. He's not making hay from it...
Trump on the other hand just spews nonsense all day long...
Re:Not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump may not survive it. This illness resolves over weeks not days- especially at the level that he apparently has it.
This whole drama is far from over. Better to stay detached from it and enjoy the freak show. We're so far over the front of the surfboard the only option is to enjoy the wipe out and hope you do not get sick.
Re:True or False depending on age (Score:5, Informative)
Covid has killed (at least) 200,000 in the US. The last time influenza killed 100,000 in a year was in 1968.
Covid is NOT the flu.
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I do find it interesting that the flu is not that deadly for children given that the common refrain is that the flu is most deadly for young and old. I think society is more disturbed by the death of a child, so it's given more attention.
As for the 0% fatality rate for covid for people age 0-19, that's some generous rounding. See https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volum... [cdc.gov] for more precise numbers. By the end of July the number was 121 children which is about the same number as a typical flu. However, covid p