A Facebook friend recently sent a link to the CDC website. The thing he was pointing out was that only 6% of China Flu deaths were actually from the China Flu. We keep hearing about “comorbidity” in relation to China Flu deaths. It finally gelled in my head what the extent of that means. Let’s look at the CDC website and you tell me if I’m getting this.
On this page it states:
Comorbidities
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.
As of today they report 183,000 deaths from China Flu. However, if you take 6% of that number it is 10,980 deaths from China Flu in reality. Other people died for sure, around 172,000 but not from China Flu directly.
I am curious about a lot of things. For example, how did they count deaths from Swine Flu? Did they include everyone that died of something else but they had Swine Flu too? How are other deaths related to disease counted? That is apparently what they are doing with China Flu. I just want to know if these numbers have always been counted the same. How about the regular Flu? Until someone points me in the right direction or I find time to do more research it is a mystery to me.
The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine appears at the top of Google when I search for the answer between Swine Flu and Covid. Interestingly, they link to the CDC and state this:
The US Centre for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) estimated that 150, 000 to 575,000 people died from (H1N1) pandemic virus infection in the first year of the outbreak.
The article leaves out “Worldwide” deaths so I’m not sure if it was intentional to mislead or if they believe they address a worldwide audience. We also do not know how they counted deaths. Did they simply use deaths from Swine Flu directly? I’m thinking that would be the case. We know that CDC reported around 60 million Americans got Swine Flu and then testing stopped. Controversy still surrounds why testing stopped. Here is a link to a CBS News article from 2009 talking about it. That was before disease became hyper political.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to downplay the impact China Flu has on already sick people. It may push you over the edge if you are already ill with 2 or more serious diseases. In any case I hate to get sick and I’m sure that is true with you the reader as well.
The ultimate question we need to answer is did we take the right course of action? Did we over react? The difference between 183,000 deaths from China Flu and 10,980 deaths is significant. We need to determine this for future outbreaks of some new viral strain. One way or another it will come someday. Hopefully we will have learned a lot by this experience.
It is little wonder that some suspect there political shenanigans going on in relation to China Flu. Humans tend to fill in the blanks when faced with partial or incomplete information. If you have an answer to the basic questions I have please comment. Also please provide a link to the resource. “Some guy says” is not a proper resource 🙂 How did they count deaths from Swine Flu? Did they include everyone that died of something else but they had Swine Flu too? How are other deaths related to diseases counted?
I learned in my first few weeks of a Statistics 101 course that when people start tossing out stats and numbers, there are a few questions that must first be asked in order to verify and validate the numbers being tossed out. First, how have all other instances of quantifiable data been tallied? Were they tallied in the same fashion as the primary subject/topic? If not then what were the variables in the equation that altered the collating of facts in the primary subject/topic? Second, from where were the numbers derived? Is the source credible and how do we know… Read more »
Good points. Hope we have answers soon. I will have more time to look for them in the coming week. However, I’m doing a lot of web work for a certain group 🙂
Thank you so much! I have been having problems getting all my devices working. I had purchased a new Mac about 2-3 months ago, but I’m not very familiar with the Catalina operating system. It feels like a giant virus stealing all my stuff. Can’t get browsers to load “certain” sites. Safari is horrible – using Firefox & a VPN which is a bit better but still have issues with some basic functionality & authentication seems impossible. I have a yubikey, just struggling with getting things set up securely. Praying for our Nation!!