Flu stats from Oct 2019 to present

Not to be too morbid... edited out ,,, starting a political conversation (i know it was not intended Hal)

Post Edited By Moderator (Pratoman) : 4/5/2020 8:11:46 PM (GMT-6)

Probably a lot of them will...

halbert said...
Not to be too morbid...edited out leading to politics..)

edited out, political nature

Post Edited By Moderator (Pratoman) : 4/5/2020 8:12:43 PM (GMT-6)

F8 said...
here's one I didnt see coming.....

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/tiger-at-nycs-bronx-zoo-tests-positive-for-coronavirus/ar-bb12copu

Wouldn't want to be the person swabbing that nose for a sample.

COVID-19 vs. Top 15 Causes of Death in the U.S.


https:// https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1727839/


Good way to visualize the virus deaths compared to death from other causes in the US......

Fuelguy

halbert said...
If 100K or 200K in the US die of Covid-19 over the next month, the shock to the system will be massive. We're talking earthquake or tsunami numbers. The biggest civilian loss of life in the last 100 years. It won't be a stretch to say that virtually everyone in the country will have a relative or friend or co-worker who is suddenly gone.
Comparing those numbers to annualized deaths from any other cause is an effort to blow smoke and minimize the scale of it.

I understand these may be false equivalents, but if anyone's curious, here are the CDC's statistics for leading causes of death in the U.S. in 2017:

Heart disease: 647,457
Cancer: 599,108
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
Diabetes: 83,564
Influenza and pneumonia: 55,672
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,633
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

What leapt out at me was chronic lower respiratory diseases (CLRD). These include chronic asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and COPD. It's a stunning number. Fourth leading cause of death. I had no clue. (And I'm a chronic asthma sufferer.)

I saw an interview with an infectious disease specialist which was very interesting. She stated that, if done right and in time, social distancing would look like an over-reaction on the other side. The goal of social distancing is to prevent wide-spread catastrophic disease and failure of our medical infrastructure. If we are able to prevent that, then it would look like a non-event when it was over.

Donna

Saipan Paradise said...
I feel I should clarify my position. I believe the lockdown to flatten the curve of Covid-19 cases and deaths is entirely warranted. A sudden epidemic of a novel infectious disease is qualitatively different from various spectra of chronic diseases (heart, lung, cancers) that plague humanity year after year. But I also believe it's an opportunity for us to question why we're willing to suffer enormous economic and social hardship to stop Covid-19 but apparently aren't willing to make the sacrifices needed to stop other diseases and conditions that predictably take hundreds of thousands of lives every year. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2020, more than 47,000 Americans will die of pancreatic cancer alone. Why aren't we willing to sacrifice to stop this scourge, among many others, once and for all? I think one can and should ask such questions while still taking the Covid-19 pandemic seriously.

I think I'm missing something Saipan. What do you think we could sacrifice to reduce pancreatic cancer deaths? Are you talking about more research money?

Thanks.

Be safe all
Wilderness

SP, I was thinking in a similar vein to Halberts comment. It's a great question and the answer is evasive. To some extent it applies to cancer. There are dietary issues we know of that could reduce our chances of getting certain types of cancers. But the better analogy is to Heart disease, diabeties, Obesity. On affect me one level, changing one's diet, and exercising, is sort of akin to wearing a mask, and gloves.
But the correlation does not seem as direct, intuitive and the effect is not immediate. I think it goes back to our need as a people, for instant gratification. If i eat chocolate cake twice a week now, it wont affect me for years. But if i go to the store, without a mask, or gloves,and am in a crowd at checkout, the disastrous effect will be more immediate.

Something for us to think about maybe.The value we place on instant gratification ?

I'll preface this reply with the information that my father was a doctor in the British Army during the Spanish 'flu epidemic. And in 1919 he caught Spanish flu himself; he was looked after in a military hospital isolation ward (in a tent in a field in France!). And he obviously recovered, but one result was that he did instil in me quite a bit about matters of health.

The key thing with this, or any, pandemic is to prevent a health care system being swamped with too many patients that at the same time, or even more specifically, prevent too many patients that all require intensive specialist treatment arriving at the same time when there are not enough specialist treatment facilities to go round. (It’s basically a complex production line, where if one bit goes at the wrong speed, then it fails to make the product.)

If you have, say, 10,000 Intensive Care beds available per month, then you should be okay if those cases arrive at a rate of 10,000 per month every month (or better still if you get 8,000 cases per month so you always keep a bit of spare capacity). Of those cases, some will die and some will recover.
However if you get 8,000 in the first month, 16,000 in the second month then 32,000 in the third month, 64,000 in the fourth, etc (we’ve all seen the curves where the line gets steeper and steeper), then there is a very strong chance that ALL the cases for whom there is no IC bed will get too ill to have any chance of recovering and you could see ALL of them die. (6000, 22000 and 54000 for the numbers I mentioned above)

The paradox with the strict measures is that, if you get it right, then the system copes and you do not see a disaster, and people might ask what all the fuss was about when it’s all over. (Like with the “millennium bug”: my computer did not crash because someone else designed the right software fixes to prevent the problems and my system was able to downloaded them to update my system.)

And believe me, being healthy, but stuck at home so you do not spread a nasty disease, is better than being isolated in a hospital because you’ve got it: as a kid aged 10 I was isolated after getting meningitis. Not good!

Alf

EDITED as, after I posted this and reread it I saw that I accidentally deleted the important sentence that said that the danger we are currently facing is due to the fact that unlike seasonal flu with Covid many more people end up needing Intensvie care treatment.

Post Edited (English Alf) : 4/6/2020 9:14:10 AM (GMT-6)

Thank you Halbert, Prato, English Alf for your thoughtful responses. Your points are well taken that the drastic measures to flatten the Covid-19 curve are necessary to save our healthcare system, and that similar measures would be ineffective against non-infectious chronic diseases. I agree. One shouldn't point to annual mortality from, say, the flu in support of an argument that we're overreacting to Covid-19.

Still, I think it's valuable to ask why it takes a pandemic for us mobilize to save hundreds of thousands of lives from known diseases. It makes me wonder about our relative complacency toward many persistent causes of mortality, and ask whether we could be making sacrifices as a society-- even if only to achieve better research funding -- to bring about more rapid advances in detection and treatment.

On being able to reduce mortality from heart disease and certain cancers by changing behavior: Isn't that what we're doing on a massive scale to flatten the Covid-19 curve? Social distancing, more frequent and better handwashing, etc. We're demanding that people change their behavior -- only for a few weeks or months, not a lifetime, so it's perhaps easier to achieve than for other diseases. I wonder whether, a year or two from now, after mass vaccination with an effective Covid-19 vaccine, people will go back to their old ways of shaking hands in greeting, barely rinsing their hands once or twice a day, not disinfecting surfaces, even though continuing the new hygiene practices would probably significantly reduce the risk of contracting and spreading all sorts of infectious diseases.

Saipan great points on the state of our society.

To me, I don't think the world will ever be the same after COVID-19.

Alf, there is some interstate cooperation going on. I used the NYC/Denver comparison because of the distance involved. From NYC to Denver is about 1800 miles (2900 km). It would be equivalent to transferring equipment (or patients) from London to Moscow.

In adjoining states, some is happening. Where I live, I know there are patients and equipment moving between New York (city) and the adjoining states of New Jersey and Connecticut, etc.