Alexpie, there is one massive hole in the article that kills it dead.
The graph showing that coronavirus is no worse than the 2018 flu is true except for one major flaw.
The numbers were kept low because of lockdown. If lockdown had not have happened the numbers would have been huge.
Completely agree, they are not comparable as lockdown would have had a big affect on the figures, and they would have been a lot higher as you say.
But on the other hand you could also argue that in those years they would have had a flu jab/vaccine available to mitigate the amount of people affected, whether that could be compared to lockdown is unknown, and also would you include the excess deaths we will get as a direct result of the lockdown? Even so, I'd tend to agree with you that they aren't comparable. To me that graph is just showing that its not
that unusual for a disease to kill this many people, even when they have a vaccine, albeit maybe a partially effective one.
More interesting to me was that we were a fair bit below the 5 year average of mortality at the end of last year and the start of this year, there was a big spike and now we are dipping back below the average.
So as we were negative to the 5 year average throughout the end of last year and the start of this year, we had a fairly mild flu season on average. Could it be that the people who would have died in an average flu season have been given an extra few months, and that potentially the ones who would have been taken by the next flu season been brought forward? Time will tell.
Clearly this is not flu and a lot more infectious and serious, and there is no vaccine like there is for flu. But for the majority it seems like whilst it may knock you about a bit, if you are under 60 and have no pre-existing conditions (severe enough to be on a death certificate as a cause of death, as the article says) then it seems even of those testing positive, the risk of dying is pretty low.
One thing yet to come is excess deaths from missed cancer treatments and the like, I think this is going to affect a **** of a lot of people, possibly more than the virus and that we may see the mortality versus the average skyrocket as a direct result of lockdown, even after dipping negative for a period.
However, I do agree without the lock down the numbers would be much higher, as more of the vulnerable group could have been exposed. So it is not comparable in that sense, but it was an interesting collection of information, even just to [bobmortimer] put in the thought fridge to snack on later [/bobmortimer] when all is said and done.