Pneumonia & Influenza Deaths of 2017/18

Post #518

Weekly deaths for pneumonia & influenza (P&I) taken together are a rough measure of acute respiratory infection deaths. The flu season of 2017-2018 had high levels of P&I deaths:

The 30-week average weekly rate per 100,000 would be 1.36 per 100,000, but the average daily rate would be about 0.2 daily acute respiratory infections deaths per 100,000.

That’s the average, not the peak.

The peak weekly death per million here is 22, corresponding to 2.2 weekly deaths per 100,000 — or 0.3 daily deaths per 100,000.

Using excess deaths as a proxy for COVID deaths, and using the season average of 0.2 per 100,000 to compare to the acute respiratory infection deaths per 100,000 for COVID in 14 select nations, look how it compares:

[click to enlarge]

Besides Norway, none of the other 13 nations had a single week in 2020 where the acute respiratory infection (COVID) deaths were higher than the weekly average of the season for the 2017/18 flu.

This evidence suggests that COVID wasn’t more lethal than a severe flu season. If COVID was more lethal, then not only would there be several weeks higher than the seasonal average for flu, but there’d also be single weeks higher than 0.3 per 100,000 — at least in populations comparable to the USA.

Reference

[daily excess deaths per 100,000] — The Economist. OWID. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-daily-per-100k-economist

[weekly pneumonia & influenza deaths] — CDC. https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html