Thread by @danielgoyal

Thread on FLU versus COVID

Apologies for lots of previous single tweets on this. Thread…

It seems many people believe Flu and COVID are in some way similar.

Many use this as an argument for easing Covid mitigation strategies.

Simply and utterly, completely wrong ..

1/n

To clear the first point up:

In the UK,

Flu deaths are 1200 per year.

At our current rate, COVID-19 kills over 40,000 per year. [this is even with vaccine coverage of >60%]

COVID-19 is currently killing more than 30 times more people than FLU.

FACT! Anyone says otherwise, ask for the evidence.

This is entirely consistent with what we see on the ground. Death from flu is rarely seen.

#COVID19 #MedTwitter

The confusion, I think, and aside the wilful distortion of facts, is that many organisations report “Flu and Pneumonia” together. Such as the ONS.

For example in ONS report:

Deaths First half of 2020,

COVID = 48,000
FLU = 394
Pneumonia = 13,600

But then report together

Pneumonia is very different than flu.

Pneumonia is one of the highest burden diseases in the UK. Almost always requires medical intervention.

FYI - COVID pneumonia is tripling the total number of deaths from pneumonia - AT CURRENT RATES!

Flu is the left column:

Thanks to @jneill for this graph, and thanks to @dgurdasani1 for sharing.

It sums up the flu versus Covid rates - current rates too.

Modelling studies for FLU

The modelling estimates are irrelevant in the argument for burden of health. They suggest we have not been taking flu seriously enough, that it is a root cause for pneumonia. The point, the burden from pneumonia is huge and covid is tripling this burden