Seems a bit of a mystery to me that masks and social distancing completely eliminated normal seasonal flu deaths but not COVID-19. I see a few possible explanations.
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I think I knew a person in the late stage of Alzheimer who eventually died from pneumonia. Maybe it matters how many people in care homes we know. I would guess, meaning I've not looked up the statistics, that most influenza deaths in the past have occurred there.
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In the US, it appears we don't test very much for flu, but we test aggressively for Covid19. I feel there is an *implicit* assumption that they are tested for comparably in this discussion, but that doesn't appear to be so. This paper explains:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6038762/ …
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Do you really know multiple people who have died in car crashes? Here in NZ it’s 1 in 15000 to 20000 each year, mostly from the … less educated … portion of the population. I’m almost 60 and I can’t think of anyone I’ve personally known who died in a car crash.
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Usually in winter about 5000 people in NZ feel sick enough to go to the doctor, get a lab test, and return positive for flu. About 500 die. In 2020 winter (6 months ago) there were 6 (six) positive tests, 0 deaths. They weren’t counted as COVID instead — we had 25 COVID deaths.
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Your observations are not by any means reliable. Way too much bias. I'm sure car crash deaths make into news. I trust the MMWR way more than your observations because it is put together by epidemiologists and statisticians. Is it perfect? No, but certainly better than musings.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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