We shutdown a chunk of the economy and asked people to stay at home to stop the spread at the end of flu season and you’re comparing to an entire season with no measures taken.
It’s and apples to oranges comparison.
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Then why does Texas have a MUCH lower Covid death rate than the majority of the country? Why do you suppose it is? What is different about Texas?
That’s another conversation entirely and it’s been rehashed dozens of times in this thread.
That said, a few things are different - less population density, minimal use of mass transit, potentially more vitamin D as you’ve mentioned once or twice, testing. Some of it could be luck. Who knows.
It would take five times the number Covid deaths to reach a normal flu season. We won’t get to 7,000 even after we open up.
Hey lets face it we panicked and took an experience (northeast) and applied it to the whole country.
I will give Abbott credit, he was one of the first politicians to see we made a mistake and had the courage to change course. Bravo Gov., our economy is still wrecked but he tried.
Flu season is over. So no, COVID deaths won’t catch up this year. No one would expect it to.
And, again, you’re comparing a full flu season in the past to a partial current season with COVID when most of it had stay at home measures.
I will play over under. We won’t go over a normal flu season death total in Texas (7,000) in two year of Covid deaths. We will open up, Covid will come back in November and it still wont get to 7,000.
The Oxford vaccine is alas not doing all that well. It’s kind of a glass half full situation!
I’ll take that.
Are you sure those Texas numbers have been that high with the flu? That seems very high for Texas in comparison to national numbers. I just checked on the state web site for flu last weekend and I thought the number was like 2,700 - 2,800 for the flu in 2019-2020.
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Yes:
Wow! That is one big number. I’ll have to go back and check the number on the state’s health site.
10,000 seems like a really large number. According to CDC between Oct 1, 2019 and April 4, 2020, there have been a total of 24,000-62,000 flu deaths throughout the country.
If Texas had 10,000 deaths, Texas has between 16% - 42% of all national flu deaths! That’s an abnormally large number given that Texas population is 8% of the total national population.
Something doesn’t seem right about this.
If you read the article it gives the prior two years as well. Covid wont approach those numbers.
What odds will you give me on that bet?
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P5 you are comparing different years. I dont know the National death from flu number in 17-18.
It is quite possible that Covid moves at lightening speed but is not very dangerous to healthy people. But because it moves so quickly that it picks off immune deficient people quickly.
I will wager a cold beer at the Coogs final four appearance in 2021 that unlike most pandemics where wave 2 is as deadly if not more deadly than wave 1, the Covid death numbers in wave 2 will be substantially lower. Kind of a morbid thing to bet a beer on but hey these are morbid times.
Ben I will bet Two cold beers at the Coogs final four appearance in 2021. The winner can choose to have them in both games or both in the championship final as the Coogs win their first national championship.
Coog51 I think I am looking at the 19-20 flu season numbers.
No I get it but the 10,000 number is for 17-18.
OH MY!!!
Morgan Stanley predicting that 2nd quarter GDP loss will be 38%. That is far more than what I was anticipating. If true and considering that is across an entire quarter and not just one month, then we can expect that our April economy was probably turned off near 50% with our economy re-starting in May and being close to 100% for what is left in June.
I am shocked by the 38% GDP loss. We can’t ever do that to ourselves again. Insane!!
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In 17-18 total flu deaths for the entire flu season is estimated to be 61,099 with a 95% CI 46,404 - 94,987. (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm)
Even then, with 10,000 deaths Texas is has 16% of all national deaths, with a 95% CI between 11% and 22%, still too high! Also, all these deaths were over the entire flu season which runs for 7 months from October to April.
With the shutdown, for the official death count stands at 1,336 cases (since March 20). Hard to say what it would have been without the shutdown. At its peak it was at had grown to 50 deaths per day. I estimate that without the shutdown we would have been over 5,000 deaths in just 2 months.