At 22:37 02/03/2020, Morgan, Andrei wrote:
>There's plenty of references suggesting that covid19 is more lethal than
>flu, perhaps around 10 times as much (estimates seem to be 1-2% case
>fatality, whereas flu is about 0.1% if I understand correctly ...
I've seen that 0.1% figure for 'flu quoted recently (in relation to
these comparisons with covid19), but I find it hard to make sense of
it. If one believes the figures I posted, indication 20,000+
'flu-related deaths per year in England, that would imply that 10
million people in England (about 20% of the entire population) get
'flu ever year - which sounds like a nonsense.
As for the lethality of covid19 infection, we are obviously in the
very early days of gaining knowledge. The deaths are probably
reasonably well documented/counted but, particularly in some of the
countries involved, the total number of 'non-serious' cases could
easily be currently considerably under-estimated (thereby appreciably
inflating the apparent case fatality rate) - so we really have to
wait until we have some more robust figures.
>As to how contagious - Thomas says "likely prove to be far more" and
>that may not be correct, but also it may be correct! Currently, we just
>don't know ...
Yes, of course, there are currently too many unknowns. I think that
the intended thrust of my original post might have been
unclear. Give the unknowns, I am not knocking the very 'cautious'
approach being taken (in the UK and many other places). Rather, I
was wondering why there was not much more interest in dealing with
the spread of 'flu, about which we know a lot more (including having
a reasonable handle on how lethal it is).
Kind Regards,
John
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