Comparative Worldwide Death Rates Does Not Reflect Pandemic Numbers

a reply to: dug88

Influenza pandemic. Specifically. COVID is not caused by an influenza virus.
That is talking about determining if a new strain of influenza is truly novel or if it is a seasonal variety. A novel influenza virus which appears worldwide will indeed cause a lot of death.


Here is a more general definition of a pandemic.
February 10, 2010

A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease.

www.who.int...

originally posted by: dug88
a reply to: bastion

No, pandemic had an actual definition before different to.the way it's being used now. It was conveniently changed last year.

www.bmj.com...

the WHO changed the definition of an
influenza pandemic by excluding reference to the words "with enormous
numbers of deaths and illness."

the
second change was to drop the requirement for a new sub-type with a simple
reassortant virus meaning that many seasonal flu viruses could be
classified as pandemic influenza.

Conveniently changed last year when your link is from 2010?

originally posted by: Blue_Jay33
A real pandemic would have seen the death rate go over 10%,

Um. I think we have confusion over what a pandemic is. It is usual to describe any new disease which spreads widely (i.e. internationally) as a pandemic. Nothing to do with death rates.

The global toll in life will never be known. It's a game for statisticians and liars. For example, Russia is under-reporting with an estimated (at Feb) death rate of 400K. No idea what happened in China as the place is so secretive and repressed nothing can ever be believed. In other underdeveloped nations e.g. most of Africa, the health systems are so impoverished the toll in life will never be counted.

a reply to: paraphi

We have numbers for the US, based on death certificates. An increase of 15.9% over 2019. Not all of that is directly attributed to COVID, of course. But there are probably a lot of cases where COVID played a part, if not the primary cause.


www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Ebola was legit scary. 57% death rate!

Covid-19 is 1.2%. yawn...zzzz

a reply to: carewemust

How many people died from Ebola?

a reply to: Phage

How many people under 70 died from covid?

a reply to: dug88

Under 70: I can't tell you.
Under 75: 153,018.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Less people are going to die of other causes when they aren't engaging in risky business like commuting 5 days a week.

a reply to: carewemust

The death rate is not the problem. Dead people don't require healthcare.

I guess we need to define the difference between a killer Pandemic and a Pandemic that has people getting sick but not dying off like they got Ebola. There have been years where virtually everybody at work got sick from something and missed work over a period of 3 months, in the last year none of my co-workers have been off for COVID and we deal with total strangers every day. My point, I have personally faced worse epidemics in my life, in 2014 everybody around me got some bug including me, it was the sickest I had ever been in my life, if it got any worse I thought I was going to die.

I know it's antidotal but I feel like within my personals sphere of friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers and customers which is a sizable amount of people, nobody has gotten sick, or hospitalized much less die.
Maybe that slants my opinion, but how couldn't it. What the news is reporting just doesn't match up to what is happening in real life around me. And I do live around a major city in North America, the suburbs.
I don't feel like I am in a Pandemic at all, just that we are being restricted like there is one.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

I guess we need to define the difference between a killer Pandemic and a Pandemic that has people getting sick but not dying off like they got Ebola.

Apples and oranges.

Ebola was not a pandemic.
It never took hold in the US so no public measures were required to control it here.
It very much less transmissible than COVID.
It did not kill nearly as many people as COVID has.

a reply to: Phage

You missed the point, but I get yours...dying from any communicable disease at a super high rate, think bubonic plague, a super deadly pandemic compared to a pandemic where many people get sick but survive.
We used to have local epidemics of chicken pox when I was growing up. If one kid got it, everybody in the class and all their friends and family got it, we all suffered together at once and we were done. Then a few years later the same thing happened with the next generation and so on. Nobody died, just left few scars on people.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

We used to have local epidemics of chicken pox when I was growing up. If one kid got it, everybody in the class and all their friends and family got it, we all suffered together at once and we were done. Then a few years later the same thing happened with the next generation and so on. Nobody died, just left few scars on people.

Chickpox has been around for a very long time so lots of people have/had natural immunity as well as being vaccinated against it. Its spread in the population is naturally limited. Even so it does kill on occasion (children in particular).

COVID is new. Few, if any, had any sort of immunity to it so it is able to spread among the population very easily. As a result many thousands have died because if it. Without the measures taken, very many more would have.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

The leading cause of dead globally was never covid, from 55m of people that die globally hart disease is still the leading cause.

Second is stroke,