Re:35% of excess deaths from pandemic not caused by Covid-19
by sparrish on Friday July 10, 2020 @11:20AM
(#23792398)
When is the end of COVID-19 season?
Why would the COVID-19 season have different dates than the flu season?
Re:35% of excess deaths from pandemic not caused by Covid-19
by pwinnski on Friday July 10, 2020 @11:36AM
(#23792603)
We have a very long history with the flu, and know that historically, the season ends around March every year.
COVID-19 is new, and was barely getting started in March. Despite early claims that it would definitely taper off in the summer, apparently based on the fact that the flu does, it is not tapering off at all. We have no idea when COVID-19 will taper off, or if it will before herd immunity is reached (with or without a vaccine).
So we don't know yet when the end will be, and they have different dates because they are different viruses.
All the comparisons I've seen this year have been using the 24,000-62,000 flu estimate uncritically when comparing to COVID-19, but apples to apples is apparently 15,620 for flu and 132,056 for COVID-19[1].
Perhaps flu-like estimates will come later, since the CDC tends to wait until the end of flu seasons to release those numbers. We're clearly nowhere near the end of COVID-19 season.
[0] https://news.yahoo.com/flu-deaths-were-counted-covid-0534499...
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/case...