But not Sunday. Too dangerous.
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Have a look at the CDC site and see what number they have for hospitalizations for the year in question. Flu season in the US lasts from October to February, five months, not six weeks. Maybe the flu was late arriving in 2017/18.
There is no question Covid 19 is more lethal for elderly and the already sick than the regular flu, no one is arguing that. It has killed a lot of people quickly, which explains the spike in excess deaths in April and early May.
A crisis of awareness is what we have
If all you look for is Covid 19 then Covid 19 is all you see.
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Also explains the below normal death rate now.
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Here you go @mikehunt, CDC burden of influenza data for the past decade. The average hospitalizations is ~400k per season, or roughly 120 per 100,000. Covid hospitalizations were at 68 per 100,000 as of May 22.
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Seems high
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Yes, yes it is, 120 per 100,000
68 with lockdown in place. Hence the need for a lockdown which you knew anyway.
I asked you earlier if you would trust the word of an expert on the causes and effects of diseases. Here is an article, published today, by a retired clinical professor of pathology and consultant histopathologist.
I can think of no time in my medical career when it has been more important to have accurate diagnosis of a disease, and understanding of precisely why patients have died of it. Yet very early on in the epidemic, rules surrounding death certification were changed — in ways that make the statistics unreliable. Guidance was issued which tends to reduce, rather than increase, referrals for autopsy.
Normally, two doctors are needed to certify a death, one of whom has been treating the patient or who knows them and has seen them recently. That has changed. For Covid-19 only, the certification can be made by a single doctor, and there is no requirement for them to have examined, or even met, the patient. A video-link consultation in the four weeks prior to death is now felt to be sufficient for death to be attributed to Covid-19. For deaths in care homes the situation is even more extraordinary. Care home providers, most of whom are not medically trained, may make a statement to the effect that a patient has died of Covid-19. In the words of the Office for National Statistics, this ‘may or may not correspond to a medical diagnosis or test result, or be reflected in the death certification’. From 29 March the numbers of ‘Covid deaths’ have included all cases where Covid-19 was simply mentioned on the death certificate — irrespective of positive testing and whether or not it may have been incidental to, or directly responsible for, death. From 29 April the numbers include the care home cases simply considered likely to be Covid-19.
So at a time when accurate death statistics are more important than ever, the rules have been changed in ways that make them less reliable than ever. In what proportion of Covid-19 ‘mentions’ was the disease actually present? And in how many cases, if actually present, was Covid-19 responsible for death? Despite what you may have understood from the daily briefings, the shocking truth is that we just don’t know. How many of the excess deaths during the epidemic are due to Covid-19, and how many are due to our societal responses of healthcare reorganisation, lockdown and social distancing? Again, we don’t know. Despite claims that they’re all due to Covid-19, there’s strong evidence that many, perhaps even a majority, are the result of our responses rather than the disease itself.
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Are we really still posting articles from the Spectator?
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Its almost like they think they can slip them in past us.
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A retired reality tv doctor.
We are, you narky old cunt. I know the usual suspects go apeshit at the very notion that someone might be interested in a magazine that’s supportive of conservatism, but until such time as @Rocko decides to stop promoting freedom of speech and ideas on TFK, I’ll post whatever I like.
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That’s fine. Just don’t expect to be taken seriously.
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Thanks for the concern, but in the words of Hank, if you mind your own business, you’ll stay busy all the time.
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Data that attributes cause of death to Covid-19 is not reliable.
So it could actually be higher?
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What would you attribute all the extra deaths in comparison to the last 5 years to? I’d say it can never be an exact figure but is very reliable.