Mater’s Musings #16: How Deadly?


References:

I’ll let the graph do most of the talking, but it’s important to note that the age group <70 years of age represents 89% of the population. The demographic that also tends to die less through natural attrition (but that’s for another post).

From this, it can be seen that the risk of dying from the 2009 Swine Flu in Australia (if you contracted it) was anywhere between 1.75 -15 times greater than for Covid-19, if you are/were below 70 years of age. What posed a greater risk to the future of this country?

In about 4 months, we had roughly 37,000 cases of Swine Flu doing this, yet in 18 months Covid has racked up around 50,000. What should have caused the most panic?

Did they lock us down? Were we subjected to tyranny? Were Parliaments suspended? Did we have curfews? Were we divided up into ‘essentials’ and ‘non-essentials’? Was our country split into parts? Could police randomly demand ID when walking in the street? Were we put under house arrest? Were our kids denied a proper education for at least 18 months? Did we rack up hundreds of billions of dollars of debt, money that could have solved a lot of problems in this country?

No. We are being taken for a ride, and it seems most are happy to strap in and put their helmets on for it. It’s unbelievable.


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Roger
Roger
August 31, 2021 8:06 am

The Paywallian is today reporting on a survey that indicates that Australians are now more concered about their jobs and mental health than they are about another outbreak of the virus.

It seems a majority now want to get off this crazy ride.

duncanm
duncanm
August 31, 2021 8:08 am

To be fair – Covid is much more contagious. That doesn’t excuse the lockdown mania.

I had swine flu – it wasn’t pleasant, but it didn’t get any worse than a fever and feeling like shit for a couple of days.

duncanm
duncanm
August 31, 2021 8:09 am

ps: the covid CFR also shows why pushing vaccines for anyone under the age of 50 is insanity.

Entropy
Entropy
August 31, 2021 8:26 am

Careful Duncanm, that kind of fact based approach got a Jeannette Young into trouble.

Roger
Roger
August 31, 2021 8:47 am

In 2009, when QLD had c. 7 cases of swine flu, a feverish Jeannette Young was telling residents to stock up on tinned food and domestic essentials. One can only conclude that she was contemplating a lockdown way back then, thus anticipating the Chinese Communist method of dealing with a novel virus by 10 years. The Federal Minister for Health at the time, Nicola Roxon, had to slap her down.

Rabz
August 31, 2021 8:52 am

About the only figure in the media that has made this comparison previously is Alan Jones. The really bizarre aspect of it all is that there was an existing national pandemic plan that emphasised a largely hands off approach in most instances.

It’s enough to make you wonder if there aren’t more significant agendas at play given the absolutely hysterical destructive insanity of our beloved leaders’ response to this chimera over the last 18 months.

Oh – and where did Swine Flu originate again? Those loathsome communist bastards will soon be gifting the planet with these viruses for as long as they can get away with it.

The only issue now of any import is how we put a stop to this monstrous insanity and try to salvage some semblance of our previous way of life.

There will need to be “a great reset”, but not the one Standartenführer Schwab and Prince Tampon have in mind.

Old School Conservative
Old School Conservative
August 31, 2021 9:02 am

Thanks Mater.
As one who is entwined with day to day matters and doesn’t deep dive into stats as you have done, I appreciate your findings and unashamedly use them with friends, family, and on other blogs.

Mak Siccar
Mak Siccar
August 31, 2021 9:09 am

Excellent work Mater. Send it to the likes of Allan Jones so that it can highlight the panic-ridden, destructive and disproportionate response inflicted on us by the spineless politicians and their health Naz1s.

thefrollickingmole
thefrollickingmole
August 31, 2021 9:20 am

This can be confirmed by harking back to th 2019 pandemic plan which was used as toilet paper by our wise mongs in government.
https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/519F9392797E2DDCCA257D47001B9948/$File/w-AHMPPI-2019.PDF

Page 21 should shame the devil, but has never been referenced by any journo.

Its a high transmissability medium impact flu.

..
The significance of transmissibility will vary depending on the stage of progress of the pandemic. It should also be considered that, as an influenza pandemic will be caused by a novel virus, there will be higher than usual vulnerability in the population to the virus. Community transmission is likely to become widespread quickly. The window of opportunity for measures aimed at controlling transmission may therefore be small.
The capacity of the health system will also be considered to determine the degree to which systems will be able to manage the increased demand and which measures would need to be put in place to best use available resources.
Indicators such as notifications, hospitalisations and availability of ICU beds may be used to determine the transmissibility, clinical severity and health system capacity respectively


This is what we are operating under.
Does it seem to match?

If clinical severity is high
Widespread severe illness will cause concern and challenge the capacity of the health sector. Areas such as primary care, acute care, pharmacies, nurse practitioners and aged care facilities will be stretched to capacity to support essential care requirements. Heavy prioritisation will be essential within hospitals to maintain essential services and mortuary services will be under pressure. The demand for specialist equipment and personnel is likely to challenge capacity. Pressure on health services will be more intense, rise more quickly and peak earlier as the transmissibility of the disease increases. Healthcare staff may themselves be ill or have to care for ill family members, further exacerbating pressures on healthcare providers.
AHMPPI 23
Secondary care services, such as blood services and diagnostic services will be challenged to maintain
capacities and the community focus will be on maintaining essential services. Pandemic emergency legislation may be needed to support pandemic specific activities. The level of impact may be similar to that of the 1918 H1N1 Spanish flu.

Real Deal
Real Deal
August 31, 2021 9:43 am

And now according to news.com.au this morning via the hopefully sober Sam Maiden we now have a “Doomsday variant”. For the love of Pete when will this insanity be reigned in?

Rorschach
Rorschach
August 31, 2021 9:49 am

A quick drive-by…

I saw another similar comparison except with hospital ICU beds. The thrust was that with H1N1 the system was stretched with something like 10-20k very sick patients. And they were treated with Tamiflu and other anti-virals … In comparison, it appears that today we can’t cope with a couple of hundred patients – and the policy is to send them home and quarantine there with little or no support bar maybe a phone call every couple of days…

Might be worth looking into as well to get this out there.

Something does not add up. Seems this is not a medical but rather a political decision.

Tom
Tom
August 31, 2021 10:00 am

The Labor premiers have validated their blueprint for power without end and, as a bonus, getting rid of the federal LNP government:

Popular support for the federal Coalition has fallen to its lowest level this term with a swing to fringe minor parties amid record Covid-19 cases and debate over bringing an end to lockdowns.

But personal support for Scott Morrison has lifted as the Prime Minister seeks to wrest control of the national agenda with almost 60 per cent of the country’s population living under some form of social restriction.

Scott Morrison is the dumbest prime minister of the past 30 years, signing his party’s death warrant while using his invention of the “national cabinet” to turn the federation into a series of warring tribes that take no notice of each other.

But, hey, like a dumb leftard, he can celebrate the fact that it’s making him personally more popular.

calli
calli
August 31, 2021 10:02 am

On hospital beds. There’s also this to consider:

In Victoria, the figures are even worse with 156 teenagers a week rushed to hospital for self harm, an 88 per cent increase when the year to May 2021 was compared with 2020, figures from the Victorian Agency for Health Information obtained by The Weekend Australian revealed.

That’s from the DM yesterday. We have 40 a day treated in NSW. Assuming that a fair whack are admitted overnight for treatment and assessment, that’s a huge strain on the hospital system right there.

Trying to find the average number of hospital beds available at any given time is like finding a needle in a haystack. My suspicion is that these mental health admissions, ultimately caused by idiotic government mandates, is bumping other “non essential” treatments and surgeries. I think Mater found a 6.3% increase in deaths from a variety of causes. Perhaps they were all preventable.

Shy Ted
Shy Ted
August 31, 2021 11:09 am

People have forgotten how debilitating the actual flu is. It puts the most robust of people on their back. Interestingly, in recent years, people with the most minor of symptoms, perhaps a cough or vague feeling of fatigue, have had investigations showing only Influenza A or B. Still waiting for SARS Cov2 to be clinically identified.

Roger
Roger
August 31, 2021 11:55 am

The conclusion of a useful primer on the Western response to the Chinese virus:

For political watchers, it’s been baffling to watch leaders muddle through the most inexplicable geopolitical debacle since the Thirty Years’ War. It is equally terrifying to know that a policy catastrophe of this scale is possible in the 21st century. But judging by his regime’s activities and the story of how all this began, at least one world leader was well aware of this potential.

For Xi Jinping, lockdown was never about a virus. It was about sending a message: that stripped of all disguise, the illusion of virtue, competence, and commitment to human rights among the Western political class is nothing more than conformity with easily subvertible norms and institutions passed down by prior generations. As lockdown policies grind on into their 18th month, it’s increasingly difficult to disagree with him.

If that was the plan, there’s one Premier in Australia who has been particularly eager to ride Xi’s totalitarian train. If there is to be a day of reckoning when it is all over, which there must be, Daniel Andrews has some questions to answer.

RTWT

Rabz
August 31, 2021 1:11 pm

Andrews has some questions to answer

Preferably while dangling from a noose.

Jo Nova
September 1, 2021 1:45 am

In a typical year Influenza infects a fifth of the population and most don’t get tested. So the case fatality rates will be heavily skewed by the number of undetected flu cases. (Real flu mortality or IFR — will be a lot lower).

Given that we were testing 30 to 1000 people to find one case of Covid, its likely there were far fewer undetected cases. So while the CFR graphs are very interesting they don’t mean what they seem.

Ro of Flu is 1.4.
Ro of Covid is 2 – 6.

Covid has much more potential for exponential growth. I know I won’t be popular for saying it. But it took a lot of restrictions to keep the case numbers down. Covid hospitalizes a lot more people than Influenza does. NSW hospitals are on the edge even though less than 0.2% of the whole NSW population is infected. Usually diseases that hospitalize more also have higher mortality rates.

Arky
September 1, 2021 3:25 pm

In a typical year Influenza infects a fifth of the population and most don’t get tested. So the case fatality rates will be heavily skewed by the number of undetected flu cases.

..
Hmmmm…

Second, national rates of influenza-associated hospitalizations and in-hospital death are adjusted for the frequency of influenza testing and the sensitivity of influenza diagnostic assays, using a multiplier approach

-CDC.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm#References
..
Sounds like you need to take that up with the CDC modellers.

Jo Nova
September 1, 2021 4:00 pm

Mater: “If your point about additional undiagnosed cases hold true, how do you know the R value of Swine Flu was 1.4?”

They don’t have to track every single case to estimate R0. Just careful tracking in single towns say or for short times in a locality.

Arky: “Burden” of influenza means an estimated guesstimate that tries to take into account that most influenza cases are not tested. For years it was exaggerated and (you’ll be shocked) used to combine all kinds of pnumonia as “influenza” to scare people into taking the flu vax.
Beware: the famous Flu death tally is “highly adjusted” and Coronavirus is still 10 times worse

Arky
September 1, 2021 5:21 pm

For years it was exaggerated and (you’ll be shocked) used to combine all kinds of pnumonia as “influenza” to scare people into taking the flu vax.

..
Ummmm.
So what you’re saying is: “They lie about the severity and spread of communicable diseases in order to make people get vaccinated?
Uh…

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