Flu Excess Death vs. 2020 Respiratory Death

Post #674

When looking at just the age group of 65-74, the average excess death rate per 100,000 associated with flu looks like this:

The USA is off to the right, and it is 3rd highest, but still within 3 multiplies of the lower rates. But when looking at respiratory infection deaths per 100,000 for 2020 in the same 9 nations, it looks like this:

Something is clearly going on in the USA, because actual deaths do not fit with expectations. USA was less than Austria and Uruguay in average flu mortality, for instance, but it was also 2 to 4 times higher than them in 2020.

Here is how the two death rates look when mapped into the same chart, this time arranged in increasing order of expectation:

And here is the average flu excess death (65-74) versus the respiratory infection death for the age group of 65-69:

There is no relationship between usual respiratory infection deaths between nations that holds up in 2020, remaining close to expectations. Knowing typical respiratory infection deaths among nations would not allow you to have gotten anywhere close in prediction to what was seen in 2020.

The upshot:

The history of international differences in susceptibility to respiratory infection death indicates that COVID does not behave like a “respiratory infection.”

Reference

[“Table 2. Mean annual influenza-associated EMR per 100 000 population by age group for EMR-contributing countries”] — Iuliano AD, Roguski KM, Chang HH, Muscatello DJ, Palekar R, Tempia S, Cohen C, Gran JM, Schanzer D, Cowling BJ, Wu P, Kyncl J, Ang LW, Park M, Redlberger-Fritz M, Yu H, Espenhain L, Krishnan A, Emukule G, van Asten L, Pereira da Silva S, Aungkulanon S, Buchholz U, Widdowson MA, Bresee JS; Global Seasonal Influenza-associated Mortality Collaborator Network. Estimates of global seasonal influenza-associated respiratory mortality: a modelling study. Lancet. 2018 Mar 31;391(10127):1285-1300. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)33293-2. Epub 2017 Dec 14. Erratum in: Lancet. 2018 Jan 19;: PMID: 29248255; PMCID: PMC5935243. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5935243/