As flu season is with us again (Sep - April) we've started testing for influenza.
The yellow highlighted area is pure bunk. Although the cough, fever and body ache symptoms of influenza are similar, the patients that are gravely ill with Covid have completely different presentations. A 30-40 year old with the flu doesn't go from walking and coughing to needing 8 liters of oxygen just to stay conscious over an hour period. The young patients we had killed by the Chinese Coronavirus did deteriorate rapidly.
In the absence/shortage of Covid tests, chest xrays and CT scans and symptoms were used to diagnose Covid deaths. The ground glass opacities on scans is a very good indicator. Additionally, the flu season was winding down, with few cases in March and basically done by the middle of April. Testing for the flu didn't go down during that period, it went up. Why? Because if you were out of Covid tests (we had an 80 per day supply cap on tests for several weeks) you still had a good supply of flu tests. In 20-30 minutes, you could know if your patient had the flu. If they had the flu, you had an explanation for their symptoms.
The green section is fear mongering. There are some people who are more susceptible than others. They often have underlying conditions. Younger people may appear to be "healthy" to friends and coworkers because their younger body still has a lot of give and take. A severe illness can push them past that flexibility and their already normally stressed body can't recover like we would expect a younger person to do.
The disease itself seems to have shifted as well. The three covid patients I had yesterday might as well have stayed home and rested. Let's pray that the milder covid really has become the dominant strain.
Yeah. Thats why I called the yellow part ridiculous and the green part fear mongering.
The real problem with the green part is the specific word choices and the lack of updates. April was over 5 months ago, but it is still what they want people to see because it implies an incipient wave of kid deaths that is just about to materialize but hasn't yet. It's a fancy way of disguising "Isnt" with a cloak of "may lead to." By now, they damn well have the information about whether this wave of instant children deaths came to pass, so I can only assume it didn't, or it would be updated to say something like "They are all dead! I hope you are happy you didn't wear a mask Orange Hitler!"
The yellow part is such a ridiculous sentence when the official number show much lower flu deaths already. The guy below this nailed it.
I just combed through dozens of articles from dozens of journals and sites, and it's like every one of them wanted to make covid out to be the worst disease on earth, but they all took different approaches. The information in one doesn't line up with any of the others. There was the basic "everyone is going to die based on our earliest and most grim predictions." There was the "almost everyone is going to die, but don't believe anyone saying everyone is going to die, that is crazy talk." There was "Actually, the flu only kills 100 people a year! Pneumonia complications aren't the flu!"
There was "The CDC doesn't count all deaths so it must much higher than they estimate! 80k a year at least!" There was "The CDC says 40-60k a year, but it is half that! They just don't know how to estimate!"
If you were to take every one of these articles seriously, you would have to believe
the flu kills 100 people, 2800 people, 25,000 people, 40,000-60,000, and over 80,000 per year.
Covid will kill 2 million, 1 million, 500k, 260k, and 120k this year.
The CDC cant estimate, estimates based on pure guesses, doesn't estimate, grossly overestimates, grossly underestimates, and has no way of estimating the correct numbers.
Other agencies and departments like NHIS have corroborated the CDC, made worse estimates, is the only correct number, cant possibly be more accurate than the CDC, doesn't even keep track of real numbers, and cant tell the difference between the flu and bronchitis.
Its a freaking mess that reminds me of that guy you know that always has to find something in any statement to disagree with, no matter how trivial. If you said it looked like rain, he would say, "Nah. It will only be a heavy drizzle at best." You know the guy. Everyone does. It just happens to be every guy in my family, so maybe I notice it more. I'd say about half of the medical and science journal (glorified magazine) articles around flu estimates were written specifically to jack themselves off. "Blah blah, I know this is what (agency or hospital or doctor) said, but they forgot to consider MY GLORIOUS AND UNIQUE TAKE!! DONT I STAND OUT NOW, PuhPAH!?" (PuhPAH is phonetically how I imagine they say Papa. Think Mike Myers from SNL doing a snooty EU mishmash accent. "Oh, puhPAH! My dearest PuhPAH! We would ever so much love to see the circus!" Maybe it has a correct spelling and I just don't know it.) They must really take originality seriously if they chose to write articles about their outlandish perspectives instead of the truth.
No one gets the flu anymore. They don't even test for it. It's gone now. There is only covid.
Why didn't we think of this sooner? If only the scientists had known they could cure cancer if they just stop testing for it! We've been so blind!!!
As flu season is with us again (Sep - April) we've started testing for influenza.
The yellow highlighted area is pure bunk. Although the cough, fever and body ache symptoms of influenza are similar, the patients that are gravely ill with Covid have completely different presentations. A 30-40 year old with the flu doesn't go from walking and coughing to needing 8 liters of oxygen just to stay conscious over an hour period. The young patients we had killed by the Chinese Coronavirus did deteriorate rapidly.
In the absence/shortage of Covid tests, chest xrays and CT scans and symptoms were used to diagnose Covid deaths. The ground glass opacities on scans is a very good indicator. Additionally, the flu season was winding down, with few cases in March and basically done by the middle of April. Testing for the flu didn't go down during that period, it went up. Why? Because if you were out of Covid tests (we had an 80 per day supply cap on tests for several weeks) you still had a good supply of flu tests. In 20-30 minutes, you could know if your patient had the flu. If they had the flu, you had an explanation for their symptoms.
The green section is fear mongering. There are some people who are more susceptible than others. They often have underlying conditions. Younger people may appear to be "healthy" to friends and coworkers because their younger body still has a lot of give and take. A severe illness can push them past that flexibility and their already normally stressed body can't recover like we would expect a younger person to do.
The disease itself seems to have shifted as well. The three covid patients I had yesterday might as well have stayed home and rested. Let's pray that the milder covid really has become the dominant strain.
Yeah. Thats why I called the yellow part ridiculous and the green part fear mongering.
The real problem with the green part is the specific word choices and the lack of updates. April was over 5 months ago, but it is still what they want people to see because it implies an incipient wave of kid deaths that is just about to materialize but hasn't yet. It's a fancy way of disguising "Isnt" with a cloak of "may lead to." By now, they damn well have the information about whether this wave of instant children deaths came to pass, so I can only assume it didn't, or it would be updated to say something like "They are all dead! I hope you are happy you didn't wear a mask Orange Hitler!"
The yellow part is such a ridiculous sentence when the official number show much lower flu deaths already. The guy below this nailed it.
I just combed through dozens of articles from dozens of journals and sites, and it's like every one of them wanted to make covid out to be the worst disease on earth, but they all took different approaches. The information in one doesn't line up with any of the others. There was the basic "everyone is going to die based on our earliest and most grim predictions." There was the "almost everyone is going to die, but don't believe anyone saying everyone is going to die, that is crazy talk." There was "Actually, the flu only kills 100 people a year! Pneumonia complications aren't the flu!" There was "The CDC doesn't count all deaths so it must much higher than they estimate! 80k a year at least!" There was "The CDC says 40-60k a year, but it is half that! They just don't know how to estimate!"
If you were to take every one of these articles seriously, you would have to believe
the flu kills 100 people, 2800 people, 25,000 people, 40,000-60,000, and over 80,000 per year.
Covid will kill 2 million, 1 million, 500k, 260k, and 120k this year.
The CDC cant estimate, estimates based on pure guesses, doesn't estimate, grossly overestimates, grossly underestimates, and has no way of estimating the correct numbers.
Other agencies and departments like NHIS have corroborated the CDC, made worse estimates, is the only correct number, cant possibly be more accurate than the CDC, doesn't even keep track of real numbers, and cant tell the difference between the flu and bronchitis.
Its a freaking mess that reminds me of that guy you know that always has to find something in any statement to disagree with, no matter how trivial. If you said it looked like rain, he would say, "Nah. It will only be a heavy drizzle at best." You know the guy. Everyone does. It just happens to be every guy in my family, so maybe I notice it more. I'd say about half of the medical and science journal (glorified magazine) articles around flu estimates were written specifically to jack themselves off. "Blah blah, I know this is what (agency or hospital or doctor) said, but they forgot to consider MY GLORIOUS AND UNIQUE TAKE!! DONT I STAND OUT NOW, PuhPAH!?" (PuhPAH is phonetically how I imagine they say Papa. Think Mike Myers from SNL doing a snooty EU mishmash accent. "Oh, puhPAH! My dearest PuhPAH! We would ever so much love to see the circus!" Maybe it has a correct spelling and I just don't know it.) They must really take originality seriously if they chose to write articles about their outlandish perspectives instead of the truth.
Wow, so that 5% or so left of the flu is actually 0%? The flu has been cured by the common cold!