flu statistics (Click on that)
CDC estimates* that, from October 1, 2019, through March 21, 2020, there have been:
38,000,000 – 54,000,000
flu illnesses
18,000,000 – 26,000,000
flu medical visits
400,000 – 730,000
flu hospitalizations
24,000 – 62,000
flu deaths
*Because influenza surveillance does not capture all cases of flu that occur in the U.S., CDC provides these estimated ranges to better reflect the larger burden of influenza. These estimates are calculated based on CDC’s weekly influenza surveillance data and are preliminary.
My estimate of final deaths due to the Coronavirus in the USA in 2020. Less than 10,000. Lower than the lowest flue year on record, 2011-2012.
Does that mean we overreacted to the Coronavirus? Perhaps, but to respond to that one must revert to conjecture. Like the scientists, the media, and the politicians have been doing for a month now.
Does that mean when the flu season rolls around next fall we shut the country down for 5 months?
When this blows over what will the Democrats try to use as an election club? Is it Trump’s fault there weren’t more deaths?
But, we should always keep this in mind:
This is during the Spanish Flu of 1918. Philadelphia, like New York City this time, was open for business going to parades, etc. St. Louis, locked down.
As a scientist, the main problem with what is going on is you can’t do the counter experiment to see if all these economy killing moves really did save lives. Once the close everything down option is taken, you can’t go back and try common sense but things somewhat open. “Essential” businesses are still open, those manufacturing PPE for example. If shutting everything down was really necessary, why not them? Because we’re running our with all the hoarding, hijacking, and stealing to sell on the black market.
Even in the graph above, the two cities were not identical. Based on this data, it isn’t clear if the total number of deaths per capita were different. For that one would need to integrate the area under the curve, or have all the data. I’m too lazy/old to want to work that hard, but I’ve seen this argument made before and it makes the government crackdown folks feel good.
Using data I’ve been accumulating from the CDC Covid-19 website, admittedly only a week’s worth, I’ve saved and calculated the following:
Date US Deaths Avg Death/Day
3/24/2020 544
3/25/2020 737 193
3/26/2020 994 225
3/27/2020 1,246 234
3/28/2020 1668 281
3/29/2020 2,112 314
3/30/2020 2,405 310
3/31/2020 2,860 331
So March 24th was the first day I got data. They say their numbers are as of 4:00 PM on the previous day.
So, I’ve calculated a running average number of deaths per day in the last column. Except for a slight dip on the 30th the number is increasing, but it doesn’t look like any exponential increase like the doomsday media and Dr. Fauci are predicting.