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Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 9:43 am
by mustangxc

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:21 am
by ponyboy
I don't care to read all that. I do see Trump's statement that, in effect, COVID-19 is just the flu.

Once all numbers are in, it's looking like the IFR is going to be about 2.5x as deadly as the seasonal flu. Or slightly less than 2x a bad flu year. At least those are the Texas numbers.

If you account for the fact that the curve goes up sharply the older you are, the actual cumulative years of life lost by victims of COVID-19 might approximate cumulative years of life lost by flu victims in a bad year. I'd be interesting in somebody running numbers on that.

Again, just talking mortality. COVID-19 may have more serious non-fatal effects than a bad flu.

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:55 am
by mustangxc
It remains to be seen. The full COVID-19 year ends in March, which is when all this began. I agree that the best way to determine deaths is to compare yearly death totals for all causes in the USA.

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 10:58 am
by JasonB
Ponyboy, two things here:

1) Trump publically said Covid is just like the flu. However, we now have a recorded interview with Bob Woodward where Trump said, back from the beginning, that it was MUCH worse than the flu, and that he only compared it to the flu to keep people from paniking. He totally mislead you, and you are still trying to prove his point, even though he admitted that he was misleading you.

2) If you are going to use all these multiplier calculations, please be aware that the 0.1 rate for the flu only covers people who got tested. The CDC estimates that 85% of the people who get the flu don't get tested. If you are going to use a multiplier to adjust the Covid cases, then you need to use a multiplier to adjust the flu IFR. To have an apples to apples comparison, you have to either compare known cases and deaths in both areas, or consider multiplications in both areas. I'd suggest that the prior is much easier and more accurate.

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 11:06 am
by ponyboy
On your point 2, I am comparing apples to apples, Jason. See second column (Estimate for Symptomatic Illnesses) on Table 1 here: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

IFR for the seven flu seasons starting in 2010 is .14

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 1:33 pm
by Charleston Pony
Can we just agree this new bug is worse than any flu any of us have dealt with in our lifetimes? For all the arguments back and forth backed up by "numbers", we have to acknowledge that we have never taken all the precautions against catching this bug than we have ever done because of any flu that I can ever remember. Despite the paranoia, there are still a whole bunch of people catching and spreading this thing...too many doing so irresponsibly.

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2020 4:16 pm
by ponyboy
Based on what we can see right now, yes, it appears to be worse than the flu. Whether it's bad enough to shut down the economy to the tune of a new, deep recession and the cost of at least one half of an entire year's GDP -- not to mention making the entire population of the United States de facto slaves of the state -- is up to debate.

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Tue Sep 15, 2020 11:20 am
by JasonB
ponyboy wrote:On your point 2, I am comparing apples to apples, Jason. See second column (Estimate for Symptomatic Illnesses) on Table 1 here: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

IFR for the seven flu seasons starting in 2010 is .14


And, as pointed out previously, using the same formulas, the CDC believes the IFR for this is between 0.5 and 0.85.

Think about it holistically. We are still way under the average number of flu infections, and have 200K deaths in the US. Whereas the worst flu season in a long time had 60K deaths. That in itself tells you beyond any reasonable doubt that the death rate for this is greater than 3x worse, because already, even with a lower number of infections, the number of deaths is over 3x higher.

And, you didn't respond to point one. Hopefully there is a recognition that the only person who started comparing it to the flu admitted that he thought it was much worse than the flu, and that he mislead everyone because he thought he public couldn't handle it.

Can you imagine if Bush had made up a false story on 9/11 because he thought we couldn't handle the truth?

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 10:11 am
by ponyboy
See below. I make only one assumption in my COVID-19 calculations: For every 10 human beings who contract the virus, 1 actually goes to the trouble of getting a (positive) test. (This assumption does not come out of nowhere: the CDC director assumes 1 positive test for every 11 people. Some estimates go as high as 1:35, even more).

Sources for the graphs below are CDC for flu (see link in post above) and covidtracking.com for corona.

Image

Regarding Trump: Yes, politicians lie. In other news, the sun rose today.

Re: Football this fall? No way

PostPosted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:03 pm
by EastStang
Big Ten announced football starting 10/23. Conference only.