Question on Covid v Flu

Tommy_Dickfingers

Tommy_Dickfingers

Well-known member
And before anyone thinks I'm about to say that Covid is just like flu, we should let it go through society blah, blah, blah ............ I'm not.

After seeing the MSM going all sensationalistic about the daily cases - well over 6k yesterday - how does the spread of Covid compare to when we have a Flu season. In other words does the Flu spread as quickly and easily through the general population as Covid appears to be doing and do the daily cases compare at all ?
 
I think Whitty is his press conference last week tried to dispell some myths about liking it to the flu. He was saying it's much more virulent.
 
Aye, remember him saying that but I wonder how much more .............. I suppose the SAGE & Governement have been too busy to check as they were coming up with the genius idea of Lockdown v2
 
Tommy_Dickfingers said:
Aye, remember him saying that but I wonder how much more .............. I suppose the SAGE & Governement have been too busy to check as they were coming up with the genius idea of Lockdown v2
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According to the information is beautiful website the infection rate is between 1.5 and 3.5 globally. Compared to 1 for Seasonal Flu. Given these rates are exponential (infecting more people leads to more people infecting more people etc...) if it is 1.5 it's still a significant uptick, if it's closer to 3.5 then its way way more infectious.
 
Thanks

I read somewhere when the common cold was first around that it was more infectious and deadly than Covid-19 is now, but it mutated over 100's of years.

We'll soon be back to normal :p
 
Tommy_Dickfingers said:
And before anyone thinks I'm about to say that Covid is just like flu, we should let it go through society blah, blah, blah ............ I'm not.

After seeing the MSM going all sensationalistic about the daily cases - well over 6k yesterday - how does the spread of Covid compare to when we have a Flu season. In other words does the Flu spread as quickly and easily through the general population as Covid appears to be doing and do the daily cases compare at all ?
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Coronavirus is more infectious than flu. There are lots of estimates of for most diseases, but with no abatement, the flu is about 1.3 and coronavirus is about 5 (measles has been estimated at 9 and 203 so this isn't an exact science!). In the USA, they believe that mutations are making it more contagious.

The flu also has vaccine abatement each year to reduce transmission to those most likely to be affected.
 
bear66 said:
Coronavirus is more infectious than flu. There are lots of estimates of for most diseases, but with no abatement, the flu is about 1.3 and coronavirus is about 5 (measles has been estimated at 9 and 203 so this isn't an exact science!). In the USA, they believe that mutations are making it more contagious.

The flu also has vaccine abatement each year to reduce transmission to those most likely to be affected.
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Which coronavirus? The covid-19 one?
 
Tommy_Dickfingers said:
I read somewhere when the common cold was first around that it was more infectious and deadly than Covid-19 is now, but it mutated over 100's of years.
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I don't know where you read that but on the face of it it's fairly inaccurate and/or misleading on a number of levels.

For one thing, the collection of symptoms that we call the common cold isn't just caused by one virus, it's caused by over 200 different viruses.

All viruses mutate so obviously all these 200+ viruses have done so and with so many of them in play, presumably some of them have may have started out by being more infectious than they are now. However I haven't read anything that definitively proves any of them were ever particularly deadly - though I suppose that just by the law of averages, a couple of them might well have been.

These viruses (or again, at least some of them) have been around for thousands of years, not just hundreds so even if they were more deadly originally we wouldn't necessarily know about it because they're weren't an awful lot of medical diagnostics going on all those thousands of years ago.

The usage of the term "a cold" for these symptoms has only been around since the 1600's and certainly since that time, the common cold has never been a deadly disease responsible for any large number of fatalities.

So I suppose it's possible that many, many millennia ago some forms of the cold may have affected people worse than they do now but as I say, if they did, we wouldn't really have any sure way of knowing about it, as it would be lost in the mists of time.
 
Liamo said:
I don't know where you read that but on the face of it it's fairly inaccurate and/or misleading on a number of levels.

For one thing, the collection of symptoms that we call the common cold isn't just caused by one virus, it's caused by over 200 different viruses.

All viruses mutate so obviously all these 200+ viruses have done so and with so many of them in play, presumably some of them have may have started out by being more infectious than they are now. However I haven't read anything that definitively proves any of them were ever particularly deadly - though I suppose that just by the law of averages, a couple of them might well have been.

These viruses (or again, at least some of them) have been around for thousands of years, not just hundreds so even if they were more deadly originally we wouldn't necessarily know about it because they're weren't an awful lot of medical diagnostics going on all those thousands of years ago.

The usage of the term "a cold" for these symptoms has only been around since the 1600's and certainly since that time, the common cold has never been a deadly disease responsible for any large number of fatalities.

So I suppose it's possible that many, many millennia ago some forms of the cold may have affected people worse than they do now but as I say, if they did, we wouldn't really have any sure way of knowing about it, as it would be lost in the mists of time.
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I was just saying :LOL:
 
Infection rates, hospitalisation rates and number of cases are kind of irrelevant, you need to have a true mortality rate and number of deaths to come with a proportional and correct response and plan. At the moment we are just guessing. We are basing this 1% mortality rate and therefore our response on incomplete data from 6 months ago when we knew nothing about the virus, had no treatments or testing and didn’t even know how prevalent the virus was. Some experts reckon it was over 100,000 cases a day back in March and some think over 10% have had the virus already. If it’s circulating amongst the young now and in schools then it was certainly doing the same and in greater numbers back in Feb and March with the virus so rampant, it’s not a new phenomenon amongst the young just because schools have opened. If you carried out antibody testing across the population I think we would be shocked and find out the mortality rate is much much lower than we currently estimate. We can’t even agree who died of Covid and died with Covid atm, we don’t even know if the test is picking up the dead virus in the body. Completely agree with social distancing, masks, shielding, temperature checks, track and trace and locking down care homes, measures to protect vulnerable in hospitals etc as they can all have a positive effect without crippling the economy and bankrupting the country for generations but the other measures have to go.
 
Interestingly on a Covid v Flu topic. My mum always used to say "you haven't got the Flu, you'd know about it" when I was under the weather wanting a day off school back in the day. I looked it up and according to an NHS study run over 6 winters, 75% of people with the flu are Asymptomatic. I thought it was interesting when I read it
 
Jostler said:
Interestingly on a Covid v Flu topic. My mum always used to say "you haven't got the Flu, you'd know about it" when I was under the weather wanting a day off school back in the day. I looked it up and according to an NHS study run over 6 winters, 75% of people with the flu are Asymptomatic. I thought it was interesting when I read it
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The real influenza is awful, I had it once when I was 20. I can see how it would kill the old and vulnerable.
 
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