Do you still think coronavirus is just like the flu? Here’s why COVID-19 is more dangerous.

[SBFNews]

Do you still think coronavirus is just like the flu? Here’s why COVID-19 is more dangerous.
by Stacey Burling, Updated: April 8, 2020

JESSICA GRIFFIN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Editor's Note
As a public service, The Inquirer is making this article and other critical public health and safety coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers.

First, some good news.

Flu season is effectively over, according to Nate Wardle, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Cases had dropped enough that the department stopped producing its weekly flu reports at the end of March.

That doesn’t mean the flu is gone. But it does mean that doctors can focus more resources on that other threat, the coronavirus.

The coronavirus has already outstripped flu as a killer in Pennsylvania, leading to 309 deaths compared with 102 deaths in laboratory-confirmed flu cases this year. During the 2017-18 flu season, the worst in the last five years, there were 258 flu deaths.

Some models predict that fatalities in this first wave of coronavirus will peak locally in mid-April, but there will be weeks of illness and death after that.

Thirteen weeks into the coronavirus era, some still question whether the new disease is bad enough to warrant an economic shutdown when influenza, a disease that kills thousands every year, is treated as an annual inconvenience. Some Twitter users, including the conservative radio host Bill Mitchell, call the coronavirus “flu lite.”

A Pew Research Survey released April 1 and conducted from March 10 to 16 found that 79% of regular Fox News viewers believed the news media had exaggerated the risks of the new virus.

Gregory A. Poland, a Mayo Clinic infectious diseases specialist who acts as a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said the question always comes up when he does radio talk shows: “Isn’t this just the flu or a ‘bad flu’?”

John J. Zurlo, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Jefferson Health, thinks the answer is clear. Both diseases can kill, but the scale of the coronavirus problem, he said, is “much, much larger.”

There are some obvious reasons to compare flu and coronavirus. The viruses can cause similar symptoms, including fever and body aches. Both are more likely to cause serious illness and death in people over age 65. This year’s flu virus has been unusually tough on children, while the coronavirus seems to largely spare them. Like all illnesses, Poland said, both cause a wide range of symptoms, with some people unaware they’ve been infected and others made deathly sick.

A huge difference is that there are vaccines for flu each fall. They’re not perfect, but when well-matched to the circulating strains of flu, which change every year, they reduce the number of cases and the amount of serious disease. There is no vaccine for the coronavirus, which can cause a disease that no one in the world had before it emerged in China in December. Unlike the flu, there are no proven antiviral treatments for coronavirus.

“I hate to think of what flu seasons would be like if we had no vaccinations,” Zurlo said.

Lisa McHugh, an epidemiologist with the New Jersey Department of Health, said it’s too early to say whether flu is done with her state for the season. Tests are way down, but New Jersey has been grappling with a high coronavirus caseload. So far, the state has had 47,437 coronavirus cases and 1,504 deaths. It does not report flu deaths.

The National Center for Health Statistics, which uses death certificate data, says there have been 1,346 deaths caused by flu and pneumonia in New Jersey and 2,019 in Pennsylvania this season. Pneumonia is a major complication of flu and is the primary reason that people who have had the disease die, but it can also be caused by other things. It is also a major cause of death in coronavirus patients.

McHugh, who declined to say whether the coronavirus is worse than flu, said many do not take flu seriously enough. “I do know how dangerous influenza is,” she said, “and I do know a lot of people brush off influenza.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated at the end of March that 39 million Americans had gotten the flu, and that 400,000 had been hospitalized and 24,000 had died. The death toll for coronavirus is 12,912 after more than 401,000 identified cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Experts said both flu and COVID-19 are under-reported. Many people who have flu are never tested for it, and there have not been enough coronavirus kits to test everyone with symptoms.

If you look at the numbers, coronavirus is clearly the more dangerous adversary — keeping in mind, as Poland pointed out, that doctors only have about three months of data. They are “literally building the airplane while they fly it.” A crucial number that is among the hardest to get is how many people infected with the coronavirus have no symptoms or very minor ones. It is important for determining any rates involving the new disease and for now must be estimated.

The death rate for flu — usually about 0.1% — is thought to be many times lower than for the coronavirus. The current best estimate for the coronavirus is 1%. That seems pretty low until you realize that the world has nearly eight billion people.

It also matters how easily a virus spreads. Each person with flu tends to infect one other person. The estimate is that one person with the coronavirus infects 2.5 others, a difference that quickly leads to much higher numbers.

Then there’s the hospitalization rate, which is why health systems are anticipating or experiencing such a crunch. Based on the CDC’s numbers, this year’s hospitalization rate for flu has been 1.3%. Studies put this rate for the coronavirus as high as 20%, with about a quarter of that group needing intensive care. “That’s a very high number,” Zurlo said.

McHugh said New Jersey is seeing higher emergency department use for coronavirus than it usually does for flu.

Patrick Gavigan, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Penn State Children’s Hospital in Hershey, said flu patients who need to go to the hospital typically stay five to six days. Coronavirus patients average 10- to 14-day stays.

Flu tends to be most deadly for the very young and the very old. It can also kill adults in low-risk groups. “We see healthy people who get flu and die every year, and the overwhelming majority of them are unvaccinated against influenza,” Gavigan said.
At best, Poland said, 60% to 70% of seniors, less than 50% of pregnant women, and less than 30% of young adults get flu shots in a given year.

While most of the people who die of the coronavirus have pre-existing health problems like heart and lung disease or diabetes, the disease also seems to be causing very serious illness in more younger, healthy people than flu does.

Zurlo wonders how the nation would react if an especially deadly strain of flu emerged. The big advantage we’d have, he said, is that the medical world is much better acquainted with flu. There are anti-viral drugs that can slow it, and drug companies know how to make vaccines.

“At least we have a model for that,” he said. “At least we have a fighting chance.”

 

[Leongsam]

All those older articles are have already been debunked because they were published without any proper data.

Even the the libtards have realised that they have gone overboard with their doom and gloom.

 

[Leongsam]

Worse than COVID-19? The Flu Killed 80,000 Americans Last Year
by Patricia L. Foster

7-9 minutes


The 2017-2018 flu season was historically severe. Public health officials estimate that 900,000 Americans were hospitalized and 80,000 died from the flu and its complications. For comparison, the previous worst season from the past decade, 2010-2011, saw 56,000 deaths. In a typical season, 30,000 Americans die.
So why was the 2017-2018 season such a bad year for flu? There were two big factors.
First, one of the circulating strains of the influenza virus, A(H3N2), is particularly virulent, and vaccines targeting it are less effective than those aimed at other strains. In addition, most of the vaccine produced was mismatched to the circulating A(H3N2) subtype.
These problems reflect the special biology of the influenza virus and the methods by which vaccines are produced.
Flu virus is a quick change artist
Influenza is not a single, static virus. There are three species – A, B and C – that can infect people. A is the most serious and C is rare, producing only mild symptoms. Flu is further divided into various subtypes and strains, based on the viral properties.
Viruses consist of protein packages surrounding the viral genome, which, in the influenza virus, consists of RNA divided into eight separate segments. The influenza virus is enveloped by a membrane layer derived from the host cell. Sticking through this membrane are spikes made up of the proteins haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), both of which are required for the virus to successfully cause an infection.

Your immune system reacts first to these two proteins. Their properties determine the H and N designations of various viral strains – for instance, the H1N1 “swine flu” that swept the globe in 2009.
Both HA and NA proteins are constantly changing. The process that copies the viral RNA genome is inherently sloppy, plus these two proteins are under strong pressure to evolve so they can evade attack by the immune system. This evolution of the HA and NA proteins, called antigenic drift, prevents people from developing lasting immunity to the virus. Although the immune system may be prepared to shutdown previously encountered strains, even slight changes can require the development of a completely new immune response before the infected person becomes resistant. Thus we have seasonal flu outbreaks.
In addition, various subtypes of influenza A infect animals, the most important of which, for humans, are domestic birds and pigs. If an animal is simultaneously infected with two different subtypes, the segments of their genomes can be scrambled together. Any resulting virus may have new properties, to which humans may have little or no immune defense. This process, called antigenic shift, is responsible for the major pandemics that have swept the world in the last century.
Forecasting flu, producing vaccine
Against this background of antigenic change, every year the World Health Organization predicts which strains of flu virus will be circulating during the next flu season, and vaccines are formulated based on this information.
In 2017-2018 the vaccine was directed against specific subtypes of A(H1N1), A(H3N2) and B. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that this vaccine was 40 percent effective in preventing influenza overall. But, significantly, it was only 25 percent effective against the especially dangerous A(H3N2) strain. This mismatch probably reflects the way most of the vaccines are produced.
The common way of producing influenza vaccine starts by growing the virus in fertilized chicken eggs. After several days, the viruses are harvested, purified and inactivated, leaving the surface proteins, HA and NA, intact. But, when the virus is grown in eggs, individual viruses with changes in the HA protein that increase its ability to bind to chicken cells can grow better and thus become more common.
When people receive vaccines produced from these egg-adapted viruses, their immune system learns to target the egg-influenced HA proteins and may not react to the HA proteins on the viruses actually circulating in humans. Thus, the virus used to produce much of the 2017-2018 vaccine provoked an immune response that did not fully protect against the A(H3N2) virus circulating in the population – although it may have lessened the severity of the flu.
Small improvements and a universal vaccine
Scientists are on the hunt for a better way to protect the world’s population from influenza.
Two new vaccines that do not use egg-grown viruses are currently available. One, a vaccine made from viruses grown in mammalian cells, proved in preliminary studies to be only 20 percent more effective against A(H3N2) than egg-produced vaccine. The other, a “recombinant” vaccine consisting of only the HA proteins, is produced in insect cells, and its effectiveness is still being evaluated.
The ideal solution is a “universal” vaccine that would protect against all influenza viruses, no matter how the strains mutate and evolve. One effort relies on the fact that flu’s HA protein “stalk” is less variable than the “head” that interacts with the host cell surface; but vaccines made from a cocktail of HA protein “stalks” have proved disappointing so far. A vaccine composed of two proteins internal to the virus, M1 and NP, which are much less variable than surface-exposed proteins, is in clinical trials, as is another vaccine made up of a proprietary mixture of pieces of viral proteins. These vaccines are designed to stimulate the “memory” immune cells that persist after an infection, possibly providing lasting immunity.

 

[Leongsam]

rt.com

If new data suggesting Covid-19 no more lethal than FLU is correct, should the world REVERSE its lockdown strategy?


4-5 minutes


By Peter Andrews, Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics.

With each passing day, we learn more about the coronavirus. And some studies suggest that the virus’s bark may be worse than its bite. Now that the initial panic is over, maybe it’s time to reappraise lockdown plans.

A recent Stanford University study found the Covid-19 infection rate is probably between 50 and 85 times higher than official figures had previously indicated. The study looked for antibodies in 3,330 people in Santa Clara County. Antibodies develop in the blood after someone has been infected with the coronavirus and cleared it. And a much greater proportion of Santa Clarans had them than official figures had at that point suggested.

If the findings — which have yet to be peer reviewed — are sound, then it takes yet another thick slice off the mortality rate of Covid-19. It would now be something under 0.14 percent, putting it on a par with, or even lower than, the seasonal flu. Hence the good news.

READ MORE: Covid-19 much more widespread than thought, and NO MORE DEADLY THAN FLU, suggests new Stanford study

Larger scale studies are underway, but research of this nature should not wash over the coronavirus discussion. It should immediately be brought to the attention of all top public health officials and epidemiologists advising governments on the best course of action. We may be due for a course correction.

A new phase of the crisis

Dr John Lee, a British retired consultant pathologist, has been doggedly making the point that we simply do not know very much about the coronavirus. “An awful lot of what’s been presented as facts … is actually hypothesis, supposition and assumption … that’s come out of models about how the virus might behave,” he said on a recent television appearance. And since these models are based on flawed testing protocols and hugely variable data processing from different countries, politicians should not pretend to be on the side of science when sermonising to their nations.

“When the facts change, I change my mind,’’ as the great economist John Maynard Keynes put it. Those were words to live by. Politicians should not feel chained to one course of action for fear that deviating from it would embarrass them—this would be to cut off their nose to spite their face. The stakes are too high now to put political capital ahead of national interests.

We have entered a second stage of the virus crisis. The first stage was a scramble to act in the face of an invisible enemy, whose potential for harm seemed almost unlimited. Governments everywhere felt that they had no choice but to hit the big red button, and like a chain of falling dominoes one after another took unprecedented lockdown measures from around the middle of March.

But now things have stabilized in much of the world, and are clearly on the downswing in badly-hit places like Italy, Spain, China and Australia. In this calm after the storm, politicians and the public health experts advising governments should take the opportunity to re-examine the evidence and decide a new, and more targeted, course of action for the future.