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Jessica Hockett's avatar

"While influenza can lead to worldwide weekly death counts of 14,000 per week..."

Can it? Are we sure?

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Deep Dive's avatar

Jessica,

As far as obtaining certainty, we can only be 100% certain of seasonal variation in deaths (e.g., deaths up to 25% higher in the 4 winter months). The seasonal death variation is best explained by a host-pathogen-environment model that is mostly under control of varying personal immunity -- rather than varying due to a background variation in the virulence in pathogens.

To answer your question more pedantically, a longer way of saying it is that seasonal reductions in personal immunity -- mostly from lost vitamin D -- create the situation where flu infections become much more associated with subsequent pneumonia and other complications, which then go on to cause deaths in people with seasonally-challenged immunity to begin with.

I'll make a post that defends this position soon.

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Markker's avatar

And it was only after all the many financial incentives to diagnose covid and only use the novel protocols that flu and other respiritary illnesses reduced or disappeared.

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R U Kidding me.'s avatar

Of course Gates wanted a pandemic.

It was reported he invested lots of money in the pharma companies in September 2019!!!!!

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