Ted Shaffrey
Hasn’t COVID-19 been more harmful than the flu to as many people as possible?
It’s a question scientists are debating as the country heads into a third pandemic winter. At the beginning of the pandemic, COVID was estimated to be 10 times more fatal than the flu, raising fears among many people.
“We’ve all wondered, ‘When does COVID look like the flu?'” says Dr. Lisa S. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. “And I would say, ‘Yes, we’re there. ‘”
Gandhi and other researchers say most people today have enough immunity, acquired through vaccination, infection, or either, against serious illness due to COVID. And that’s even more true because the omicron variant doesn’t seem to make other people as unhealthy as previous strains, Gandhi says.
So unless a more virulent variant emerges, the risk of COVID has been particularly reduced for most people, meaning they can spend their lives, Gandhi says, “in a way you lived with endemic seasonal flu. “
But there are still many divergent perspectives on this issue. While the risk of COVID-19 would possibly come from the danger of the flu, skeptics doubt it has reached that point again.
“Sorry, I just don’t agree,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, a White House medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “The gravity of one in relation to the other is quite surprising. And the possibility of killing one on top of the other is quite eye-catching. “
COVID is still killing many other people every day, meaning more than 125,000 COVID deaths may occur in the next 12 months if deaths continue at this rate, Fauci notes. COVID has already killed more than a million Americans and is the 3rd leading cause of death in 2021.
A flu season kills about 50,000 people.
“COVID is a much more severe public fitness than the flu,” Fauci said, noting that this is especially true for the elderly, the organization that is most at risk of dying from the disease.
The debate over the COVID death rate is based on what counts as COVID death. Gandhi and other researchers say the number of daily deaths attributed to COVID is exaggerated because many deaths attributed to the disease are other causes. reasons have also tested positive for the coronavirus.
“We now consistently see that more than 70% of our COVID hospitalizations fall into this category,” says Dr. Lisa Schoen. Shira Doron, infectious disease specialist and professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. those other people die and the accounts all as COVID deaths, at a pretty significant discount. “
If deaths were ranked more accurately, the number of deaths would be closer to the number of flu victims in a typical season, Doron says. rate: It would be about the same as the existing flu, which is estimated at around 0. 1% or less.
In a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Thursday, researchers tried to rule out more deaths to analyze the death rates of other people hospitalized “primarily from COVID-19. “They find that the mortality rate has decreased particularly in the omicron era, to the delta period.
But Fauci argues that it’s hard to distinguish between deaths caused “by” COVID and those “with” COVID. The disease has been found to put stress on many structural systems.
“What’s the difference with someone who has mild congestive central insufficiency, goes to the hospital and contracts COVID, and then dies of profound congestive central insufficiency?” he asks. “Is it with COVID or COVID? Yes, COVID has contributed to this. “
One momentary explanation for why many experts believe the COVID death rate is likely to be lower than it seems is that many infections go unreported lately due to home testing.
The mortality rate is a relationship, the number of deaths with respect to the number of instances shown, so if there are more actual instances, the probability of an individual dying is lower.
“We’ve reached the point where, for one person, COVID poses less of a threat of hospitalization and death than the flu,” Doron said.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 reaction coordinator, agrees, at least because COVID vaccines and treatments are better than flu vaccines and treatments.
“If you’re up to date on your vaccines today and have the treatments, your chances of dying from COVID are incredibly rare and in fact much lower than your threat of having problems with the flu,” Jha told NPR.
But Jha says omicron is so contagious and infects so many other people that “at the population point it poses a much greater risk to the U. S. population. “”The U. S. than the flu,” and it can still cause more deaths in total.
In addition, mortality rates from any disease vary with age and other demographic factors. It should be noted that COVID is still much more deadly for the elderly and medically frail than for the young. Recent cdc knowledge shows that, compared to people ages 18 to 29, other people over the age of 65 to 74 are 60 times more likely to die; those over 75 to 84 years of age are 140 times more likely; and those over the age of 85 have a 330-fold increased risk.
The danger is especially greater for those who are not vaccinated, reinforced and properly treated. And as COVID continues to spread widely, they remain vulnerable to exposure through social contact.
While younger, in a different way, other healthy people may have very poor health and even die from COVID, this has become rare.
“I think it’s vital that other people have a transparent concept of the truth to live their lives,” says Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. and mortality rates, I think that’s problematic. “
Other researchers argue that COVID is still much riskier than the flu.
“No matter how you look at it, there have never been cases where COVID-19 has been milder than the flu,” says Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of the University of Washington in St. Louis, who has compared COVID-19 to the flu.
“Never, never in the history of the pandemic, in all of our studies from the beginning until now, we found that COVID-19 is also harmful to the flu,” Al-Aly says. “I had a higher risk. “
Some experts expect more knowledge that shows a transparent trend in reduced mortality rates.
“I’ll probably feel more comfortable saying something like, ‘Oh, COVID is similar to the flu’ when we see a trend like this,” says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in the Division of Health Policy and Public Health. “We’re starting to see that, and I haven’t literally noticed it in a sustained way. “
Many also point out that COVID can bring the threat of long-term fitness issues, like long-term COVID.
“Even other people with mild to moderate COVID symptoms can end up with prolonged COVID,” Fauci says. “It doesn’t happen with the flu. It’s a completely different ball game. “
But Gandhi also questions this. Much of the estimated threat to prolonged COVID comes from other people who have become serious early in the pandemic, she says. And if you factor in that, the risk of long-term physical disruption may not be higher with COVID than with other viral infections like the flu, he says.
“It was a severe COVID that led to a prolonged COVID. And as the disease has subsided, we are seeing a decline in prolonged COVID rates,” Gandhi says.
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