The figure that most people use when talking about the death rate of influenza is 0.1-0.2% (i.e. 1 to 2 deaths per 1,000 cases of flu) They then say that the lower estimates of COVID-19 fatality rate are similar, so it's comparable But they really aren't
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The 0.1-0.2% figure for influenza is one estimate of the CASE fatality rate - i.e. the number of deaths divided by confirmed cases The CFR for influenza varies significantly, but is around 1-40 deaths per 1,000 people infected (0.1-4%)
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Comparing to COVID-19, we can see that influenza, with its CFR of 0.1-4% is actually quite a bit lower than the CFR of COVID-19 varying from 0.1-20%
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This is largely to do with testing - if we only divide deaths by CONFIRMED cases, we ignore all of the people who are never tested for either disease Which is where the INFECTION-fatality rate (IFR) comes in
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A 2014 systematic review looked at CFR and IFR estimates of influenza during the H1N1 pandemic Now, this was a *bad* year, but it's still interesting to see what the numbers arehttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/ …
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According to this review, if you use the denominator of everyone who is infected (determined from serology tests) the IFR of influenza is 0.001-0.01% (1-10 deaths per 100,000 infections)
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In comparison, the LOWEST estimate of COVID-19 IFR that I've seen anywhere comes from an Iranian paper that has been criticized for undercounting deaths They estimated an IFR of 0.09% (90 deaths per 100,000 infections)
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So even using the LOWEST POSSIBLE FIGURE for COVID-19 and the HIGHEST POSSIBLE FIGURE for influenza, the infection-fatality rate is still 9x higher for COVID than the flu
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A more realistic estimate, using the plausible ranges for both of these diseases, puts COVID-19 at around 100x more deadly than influenza That is really quite a lot
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It's also worth noting in this thread that even using the influenza IFR is somewhat misleading, because these IFRs are calculated differently
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The influenza IFR is generally calculated using modelled EXCESS mortality attributable to influenza COVID-19 IFR is instead being calculated by simply dividing confirmed deaths by inferred cases
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So even this slightly better comparison, that says COVID-19 is about 100x deadlier than the flu, is using different numerators (although the same denominator) and thus may underestimate the risk
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To take a leaf out of
@d_spiegel's book, this means that you have a similar risk of death from a single COVID-19 infection to 50-100 influenza infections over the course of one yearShow this thread
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