Lots of people are still comparing the COVID-19 death rate with influenza ("it's only as deadly as the flu!") This is very misleading If you compare apples to apples, COVID-19 is MUCH deadlier than the flu
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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
End of conversation
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