Covid-19 compared to other viruses

[Sapphiresunrise]

I apologise sincerely in advance if my post causes any offense or uproar, that is not my intention at all. I am aware several MN posters fall into the high-risk category or have family members who do. People are understandably feeling on edge right now.

Just been doing a lot of reading (i'm no expert obviously). I know this is not the flu, but I read that flu caused roughly 20,000 UK deaths per flu season.
Many people believe that Covid-19 has been around for longer, as do I. If this had never been discovered, would the deaths have just been recorded as flu/pneumonia ?

I am aware that this has a very small chance of death in young, healthy patients. We are seeing them on the news now which is terrifying and tragic . Are these likely to be very rare/exceptional cases ?
Isn't there also a very small chance that young, healthy people can die of the flu ?

A large majority countries which have a temperature of above 35c appear to have a significantly lower number of cases, and death rates are in single figures/zero.

The patients who die. Are all patients' death recorded with Covid-19 as the sole cause, or did they die WITH Covid-19?
I'm sure other people have asked the same questions.

Hopefully I don't sound completely stupid or ignorant, just trying to gain some insight and maybe put people at ease.

Yes it's definitely important we report these deaths in the media as it will stop young people getting complacent.
I also agree that a lot of the highly vulnerable group who have died will have maybe gotten either the flu or Covid, as opposed to it being an additional number on top of the annual flu deaths.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says

I don’t think there’s a great deal of evidence for it having been circulating here for a while. The flu surfeillance System would have packed something up and the proportion of tests coming back positive was tiny.

Also, the majority of people who die might have underlying conditions but it doesn’t follow that those people would have died from those conditions. There are millions of people in this country with chronic conditions e.g, asthma. Diabetes, that are at higher risk but who would other wise have been fine.

The number of people needing ICU care is also a big problem. If we do nothing about this virus not only are we going to have to leave people who would have recovered to die but people are more likely to die from anything else that might put them in ICU. You can’t ventilate patients without ventilators and nowhere has enough ventilators to treat all the patients that need one.

While ICzu capacity can be pretty tight in a normal flu season. It’s absolutely nothing compared to what will happen with this virus.

And yes that's a very good point about there being more than one coronavirus.

Do you think that the hospitals are making it up op?

What would you suggest the motive is to create a fictitious pandemic (as this is what you are essentially saying, a cross the globe governments, doctors, scientists etc. are making this seem worse than it is)

Frankly yabu, scientists who study this have advised that this is V different and the rate of deaths is quite obviously different here.

www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/18/21184992/coronavirus-covid-19-flu-comparison-chart

I was reading a report by a doctor in India who said that in a lot of areas they weren't testing for CV until outside forces took an interest and they had to get involved. The amount of deaths reported are those that have been tested while alive. Not the amount found dead.
The hot weather does kill it off, which means it will continue to do the rounds in other countries whose winter is yet to come.

I know someone who is HIV positive. She goes to support services/meet ups and there's fear among them. They would be very unlikely to die of anything else, but this could kill them.

It's the lack of vaccine and if it is like the other corona viruses, we won't become immune.

Your reasoning is like saying that we shouldn't cure malaria, lassa fever or elboa, because they have so many other threats of death hanging over them.

We are sacrificing the economy - yes - but we are also sacrificing a generation of young people if this goes on too long in terms of their wellbeing and future financial stability.

We knew this virus was coming and sensible precautions in January such as stopping flights or incoming quarantines could have prevented this shambles.

I have absolutely no doubt in ten years the death and misery due to the effects of this lockdown will surpass those of the virus

The major difference is in the RO, which is the rate at which a contagious person passes the virus on to other people:

Seasonal flu: 1

Covid-19: 3

Which means it is three times as contagious and possibly 10 times as deadly.

Just because some people have mild or no symptoms does not mean that it is not serious.

Young and healthy people do die of flu. They also die of Covid-19 at 10 times the rate they die of flu. It is far more deadly for us all. Until you have it you don’t know how it will affect you. Are you willing to make everyone roll the dice and find out if they are one of the ones who’s immune system can’t cope?

Do you understand the exponential nature of the spread of this disease?

China stopped it before their health system was overrun.

The largest proportion of people ventilated in the end were healthy males 40+ (about 70%).

Basically you have to ventilate people until they fight it off or they die. (The vulnerable will most likely die)

So while you have enough ventilators and you contain it, it doesnt look so scary.

Population of uk 66 440 000.

If "only" 60% of the population get it only
1 195 920 people will die (based on a 3% death rate). 15% will need ventilation, thats nearly nearly 6 million people in need of ventilation for up to 3 weeks.

We had 4000 ventilators, 11000 once we closed the operating theatres. 21000 if we can build an extra 10000 quick enough.

Thats one hell of a potential death toll

And that was Chris whitty's best case scenario.

The 80% infections rate needed for herd immunity aimed at by govenment leaves 58 467 200 infected.

Collateral damage: 1 520 147 deaths.

That leaves the 15% that "only" need oxygen to survive. 8 770 080 people. We have 21000 ventilators. Many of them 40+ otherwise healthy males.

If youre not scared and fearful for the number of of lives that could be lost you damn well should be.

We are moving this thread to our Coronavirus topic area now.

No, we certainly should not be feeling scared and living in fear. What good is that going to do other than drive anxiety in people and potentially tip some over the edge ?
As I predicted, there have already been suicide reports as a result of this.
We can be concerned and cautious, but nobody should be afraid.

Also, unless the entire population is tested for Covid 19 than we can never know the death rate.
We can only know the death rate of hospitalised cases, as we know, or those that were found deceased.

@ Sapphiresunrise

The issue is that some people are still not taking this seriously and going out and having BBQs and just swanning about as if this is all made up (looks hard at America). All those people aren’t killing themselves. They are contributing to the overall death toll by spreading the disease.

A lot of people need to be more frightened so they stay the fuck home.

Sapphiresunrise you don't need to test the entire population, but you do need to do proper random sampling. Some work along those lines has been done in Iceland (the country) which suggest that about half of those who have the disease don't have symptoms:

www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/coronavirus-testing-iceland

That gives a starting point for calculation mortality rates.

I suppose they are taking into account possible mutations

Ah ok, I wasn't aware of what had been done in Iceland but will take a look, thanks !

Hazelnut
But you are making huge extrapolating assumptions there based on data whereby only symptomatic & often only severely symptomatic cases are even tested. Of the UK 66m population a huge chunk are children, who do not appear to be severely impacted at all.

Also people keep bandying around the term "ventilator". Be specific. We have a LOT more capacity to provide lower forms of breathing support (oxygen prongs, c-papp, airvo/vapotherm etc) which may be all some severely impacted people need, vs full intubation, the most invasive, which is what "ventilation" usually refers to. You can have oxygen without being ventilated.

People are scared. The vast majority are following advice. Scaremongering does not help.

Most people will survive this.

Even in a worst case scenario your odds of survival are at least 49 to 1 (more if as suspected, the mortality rate is vastly overstated by lack of testing of assymptomatic/mildly symptomatic people).

People should exercise caution and follow government advice but panicking and spreading fear are not helpful.

Many people believe that Covid-19 has been around for longer, as do I. If this had never been discovered, would the deaths have just been recorded as flu/pneumonia ?

This question is academic. There is no way we would not have discovered coronavirus. 1. It is highly contagious and any health system has a legal obligation to report clusters of outbreaks. An increase in pneumonia was reported which led to identifying the strain. 2. The symptoms are different to flu- some are the same but dry cough is concerning-productive cough means an infection is being fought off. Dry cough over time points more to chronic conditions or inhaled lung damage and would warrant more investigation.

Are these likely to be very rare/exceptional cases ?

Young people- yes relatively. But lets be honest its more tragic when a young person dies of a curable disease.

A large majority countries which have a temperature of above 35c appear to have a significantly lower number of cases, and death rates are in single figures/zero.

My theory is sunshine=vitamin D and there is some evidence that Vit D helps prevent respiratory infection.

The patients who die. Are all patients' death recorded with Covid-19 as the sole cause, or did they die WITH Covid-19?

Right now this is a challenge. Sorry to sound morbid but I would think coroners have to make a case for doing an autopsy on someone who died of suspected or confirmed coronavirus due to the nature if it being an infectious disease.

The point Chris Whitty was making that a small number of people would have died anyway is about a very tiny number who were already at end of life stages and ones we don't know who might have had heart attacks etc.

The point about us feeling terrified etc. As above it is always tragic when someone dies young. The reason coronavirus is all over the news is not because we are overreacting, it is because:

1. it is all at the same time. It is the surge. We have not got enough ventilators.

1. It is more contagious than flu- nhs are likely to get it which means they cannot give the care to patients. We have not got enough PPE.

DD was in intensive care in November when it's busy season for RSV bronchiolitis and one night there was only a single intensive care bed available in the whole country. That is terrifying OP. I hope you DD was okay

Ps in Germany there has been far more testing. Result: much lower death rate est 0.4%.

Well said.
It is important to make people aware that people young and old are at risk, to exercise caution, but making people panic is going to have negative health consequences. I, and probably others, have had stress headaches and chest pain through the anxiety this has brought on.
However I really do believe the actual death rate is probably 0. Something percent.
True, it should be 0%. But I imagine it to be less than 1%, certainly.

That's reassuring to hear, and even though Germany has done far more testing than us, there are potentially even further undiagnosed cases, leading to an even lower death rate.

swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

Not as bad as the Daily Mail are making it out to be

The thing with flu is that the population has some immunity from prior infection and from vaccines, so it isn't just going to run riot. The exponential growth of an unmitigated covid 19 outbreak would rampage through the population and overwhelm the NHS affecting anyone requiring health care for any reason.

The 20,000 death rate figure has been suggested as an absolute best case scenario for Covid 19 in the UK, if we take all measures being suggested to isolate, and increase nhs capacity. Left uncontrolled I think the estimates have ranged from 500,000 to over a million UK deaths in this first outbreak.

It isn't like the flu in its effects according to doctors, seeing these extreme auto immune reactions, severe pneumonia and so many young people so sick. It is many times more fatal than the flu.

As for young people and people without underlying health conditions, yes many will die. In some countries there are already reports of 40-50 % of serious hospitalised cases being aged 20-54. Due to the high numbers catching this illness, a case fatality rate of 0.2 for teenagers or 0.4 for people in their 40s is going to be a lot of people. So I think no, the cases of young and healthy people dying will not seem like, or be, exceptions. Former CDC director in US stating that the illness has much wider spread of risk across age and health level than has been conveyed by emphasising impact on elderly...'we were wrong about that'.

The difference lies in the no immunity factor of covid-19. A lot of people will get ordinary flu each year but a lot of them/us will already have a certain amount of immunity and will recover well enough at home and also the flu vaccinations help to reduce contracting it.

The ones that unfortunately don't survive are usually old and or suffer from other illnesses. Covid-19 is different because no one has immunity so both young, healthy and old in mass numbers are getting sick and needing help/treatment, consequently overwhelming healthcare provision.

It is really quite obvious what the differences are, once a vaccination is made then we may consider on par with ordinary flu.