Pandemic cases and deaths, 2009 vs Covid today

[Kilgore]

Can someone explain the difference between the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and what we are experiencing today?

From the CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html. Here are two excerpts,

"Additionally, CDC estimated that 151,700-575,400 people worldwide died from (H1N1)pdm09 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated"

"From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (range: 195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the United States due to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus."

Looking back, I barely remember the 2009 pandemic, let alone over 60 million cases and over 12 thousand deaths resulting in the hair on fire reporting we have today. I do know we took no precautions beyond the regular enhanced hand washing at work at the time. Asked the wife and she recalls no hording, shortages, sheltering, or anything else out of the ordinary.

So what's the difference between 2009 and today? My skept-o-meter is ticking upward, so what am I missing?

[GemDigger]

1. When you "recover" the damage to your lungs are permanent. That is one thing.

It is new so there is no vaccine / cure. You don't need to be intubated with the flu. In many cases you DO need to be intubated with Covid.

Your skeptometer might get your ass dead.

[Kilgore]

3. Will take my chances

So you can't tell me in real, understandable terms what's the difference.

[GemDigger]

7. Take your pick

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=JC5yXuXIC9jQ-gTcv6joAQ&q=covid+19+lungs&oq=covid+19+lungs&gs_l=psy-ab.3...1371.5279..5576...0.0..0.100.1015.13j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i131j0j0i3.uZ_bo-39ID4&ved=0ahUKEwjl6r6EnKToAhVYqJ4KHdwfCh0Q4dUDCAc&uact=5

Edit: Permanent lung damage cannot be explained any simpler.

[Kilgore]

10. Thank you

Understand it's completely my choice.

[fleabiscuit]

70. Not completely. nt

[Bookworm2586]

35. Pneumonia is a complication of any influenza

You could need intubation, if you get complications of the flu.

[GemDigger]

39. This is not the flu.

[Bookworm2586]

41. I understand that

My reply was in response the post that stated that you need intubation for the coronavirus but not for influenza.

[Ms. Toad]

43. The difference is that pneumonia is part of the disease with COVID 19

It is not with influenza - it is a secondary infection that fighting the influenza left you vulnerable to.

[Polybius]

62. "the damage to your lungs are permanent"

From what? Which disease are you talking about, Covid-19 or (H1N1)pdm09? If it's Covid-19, it's the first that I'm hearing about any kind of permanent damage.

[GemDigger]

64. Covid. What I did not do was emphasize that it was the serious case.

I am looking for the articles / videos I got it from.

[Dennis Donovan]

2. There's no comparison in regards to economic impact

None.

[Kilgore]

6. Economic impact is man made

What's different between the two illnesses that makes it so bad?

[Dennis Donovan]

49. No idea. But it didn't crater the economy in 2009

My point.

[Laelth]

53. We just can't tell, at this point, how bad it's going to be.

If it ends up being as bad as the 1918 pandemic, that’s going to be really bad. More here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213100840



-Laelth

[Jim__]

4. Look here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213120907

Testing, testing, testing - which the trump admin didn't so and effectively blocked.

[uponit7771]

5. FACT: "Obama administration tested one million people for H1N1 ***in the first month***"

The reason people don't remember it is because the Obama admin handled it so well can kept deaths down below 13,000

[Kilgore]

13. Will research and confirm

[uponit7771]

38. Here's my link on the issue, (inside)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213120907#post4

[Kilgore]

59. Thank you

[AlexSFCA]

8. I dont remember anything about it

I thought swine flue was just in Asia not the US. Don’t recall media talking about it non-stop, don’t recall any shortages of anything, any travel issues, stocks crashing, etc. As if it didnt happen. In fact, was just reading about it the other day and was shocked how serious it was.

[Kilgore]

9. That's my point

Thank you

[NewJeffCT]

18. I remember it from 2009

because I had it and my daughter (then 6) had it as well. We were both fine.

[Bookworm2586]

40. It was very serious

It is estimated that 11–21% of the global population, or around 700 million–1.4 billion people (of about 6.8 billion total), contracted the illness – more people than the Spanish flu pandemic,[3][7] with about 150,000–575,000 fatalities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

[Archae]

11. I actually had it.

Put me in the hospital for 2 days, and home by myself for a couple weeks.

Yes, I did feel miserable.

[Kilgore]

16. Truly hope you feel better soon

[Roland99]

12. H1N1 mortality rate was 0.02%. About 80% LESS than normal flu

It wasn’t as severe nor as deadly. It was just very widespread

Covid-19 has a mortality rate of 2-3%. Multiple orders of magnitude worse than H1N1

If this spreads as widely as in 2009, we’d see 6-9 MILLION dead. Probably more as mortality rates would go up as hospitals couldn’t handle the load

[Kilgore]

20. How confident are you in the mortality rate?

It appears to have a very wide range depending on the source.

[Roland99]

25. Very confident. Those are from multiple sources

https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-to-sars-swine-flu-mers-zika-2020-3

The big difference this time is that the elderly are more susceptible. Swine flu seem to target mostly younger people and children who are more resilient.

[AlexSFCA]

54. Also, it's not just mortality but how long recovery may take

Covid-19 seems to have long recovery (4-6 weeks) and likely needs a lot more medical attention than H1N1 thereby effects on healthcare capacity and economy.

[uponit7771]

34. +1, Here's a source that confirms your claim of low number for flu. h1n109 was "novel" just like

COVID19

https://theweek.com/speedreads/903080/trumps-tweets-show-dramatic-9day-shift-toward-actually-taking-coronavirus-seriously

Trump additionally hammered the Obama administration for the death of 14,000 Americans during the 2009 outbreak. Again, that's misleading; Joanne Kenen, the health editor at Politico, noted it's actually even "a low number for flu season." By comparison, the CDC estimates there have been between 20,000 to 40,000 flu deaths in the U.S. so far in 2020.

[Bookworm2586]

47. Is it possible to know the mortality rate?

This early in the pandemic, with insufficient testing, we are probably only seeing the mortality rate for serious cases, which will obviously inflate the numbers.

[Roland99]

48. Can only go off the data available

It may drop but it’s still deadlier than swine flu

[Crunchy Frog]

69. I'd be willing to bet there are lots of fatalities that were never tested

or confirmed for coronavirus.

They operated under the assumption, for so long, that you couldn't have it without either foreign travel or documented exposure. Still operating under that assumption in many parts of the country.

[Freddie]

14. No vaccine and no treatment like Tamiflu

And much more contagious.

[PA Democrat]

15. You are trying to comparing an ENTIRE YEAR'S worth of data on H1N1 to

data just emerging from a pandemic in its initial stages.

Get back to me in a year.

[Kilgore]

21. Fair enough

You are correct.

[wishstar]

17. in 2009 we had a vaccine out to public in 6 months and ample testing ability

The 2009 Swine H1N1 was a strain of influenza that could be incorporated into our annual flu shot by Oct/Nov 2009 after that flu had first started in spring of 2009. We don't know if this virus, which is not flu, will mutate and experts still expect a wait of over a year for a vaccine. So we will not only be dealing with the usual high flu deaths, but an secondary infectious disease on top of that for indefinite future that our medical system can't handle.

[NewJeffCT]

23. there has also been general seasonal flu immunities

as well built up over many years. There is no seasonal coronavirus immunity or partial immunity yet.

[Kilgore]

27. Thats understandable

[Kilgore]

26. Help me understand

It's not the flu that will kill you, but the follow on infections?

Lease excuse the dumb questin, I'm about as far from the health profession as you can get.

[uponit7771]

37. +, actually we had 1 million tested in the first month (link)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213120907#post4

[mercuryblues]

19. The Covefefe virus

is not the flu. A big difference is who is president. Obama took this seriously from the get-go. trump called Covefef a hoax for 3 months.Under Obama 1 million people were tested in the 1st month. Under trump, testing was denied allowing for unfettered spread.

trump denied and lied, the markets like calm, facts and stability. Obama was all over H1N1 creating stability Keeping the markets calm. trump is throwing grease on the fire.

Before Covefefe trump had already been pumping billions into the stock market and kept interest rates low, it gave the markets the appearance of being healthy and profitable. When this hit trump had used up all the accounting tricks that would be handy today to keep them stabilized.

The emperor has no clothes.

[Kilgore]

28. Thank you for the political response

But I'm interested in the science and statistics instead

[mercuryblues]

45. it wasn't political

and you didn't ask for a scientific response. You asked what you were missing. A big part of that is the response. We would have far fewer cases today, if trump followed government protocol and had a scientific team that would alter that to fit this pandemic. Citizens would not be panicking. His insistence on calling this "hoax" has caught this country flat-footed. The markets would not be in a free fall.

As for the scientific response other posters have covered that.

[Ms. Toad]

22. More contagious, more than twice as deadly, more contagious, transmissible pre symptoms

plus, it's not a human virus so it means none of us are immune to it

Here's a explanation (I can't copy part of it, at least not using this device)

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3051612344906616&id=100001736411273&ref=content_filter

ETA: and frankly, this is the Fox news line, up to a week ago.I'm tires of battling it among my FB right wing friends, who have now mostly backed off now that their leaders have told them it is ok to take it seriously, only to have it pop up here

[Roland99]

29. Covid-19 is actually 100x deadlier than H1N1

0.02% vs 2% mortality rate

[Kilgore]

32. In a certain age group, or overall?

I can see 2% among the elderly, but not among the young.

[Roland99]

33. Overall. Read the links. Why are you being so obtuse?

[Ms. Toad]

46. At every age range, except 0-9

COVID 19 is twice as deadly as influenza.

The average death rate for the seasonal influenza is .13% (.1, if you round to one place)

The death rate for COVID 19 starts at .2%

For ages 10-39, the death rate is .2%
For ages 40-49, the death rate is .4%
For ages 50-59, the death rate is 1.3%
For ages 60-69, the death rate is 3.6%
For ages 70-79, the death rate is 8%
For ages 80+ the death rate is 14.8%

These are estimates based on confirmed deaths divided by an estimate of the infected population that might have died (i.e. people who just contracted the illness and woul not likely die for another 2 weeks are not counted in the denominator.)

[Kilgore]

66. Not a surprising distribution

The older you are, the better chance you will die. No surprise there

Since my initial post, I have looked at the numbers and the variance is huge depending on the assumptions made when beginning the calculation.

[Kilgore]

31. That's not nice

I'm asking an honest question about something that makes no sense to me.

[Ms. Toad]

42. Unfortunately the honest question

is an exact match to the crap that right wingers have been spouting, at the direction of their fearless leader, for the last month: "This is just the flu. This is just a bad cold. The flu kills more people every year." That reasoning puts my family's lives at risk (all 3 of us, plus my parents and an elderly aunt are at risk).

It's also the same pattern that was followed when right wing attacks on same gender marriage were expressly framed in a way to appeal to liberals, and in the midst of an 8 year struggle to have my marriage recognized in my faith community I had to explain to people why legally recognizing my marriage would not require any church to do so (after all, no one forces a Catholic church to marry individuals who have bee previously divorced, even though they were legally permitted to do so). Removed from the frame of anti-LGBT, and placed in the frame of religious freedom you get liberals on your side)

So I am extraordinarily sensitive to right wing intrusion into liberal conversations. I'm not saying you were doing it intentionally - they are very good at what they do - my friends questioning me about whether we ought to back off from a push for legal recognition had no idea where their concerns came from. But I recognize it when I see it, and try to call it because it is important to recognize when we're being manipulated.

[ismnotwasm]

60. Yup.

[Kilgore]

67. Fair enough

Look at my profile. Have been here quite a while, and I do ask hard questions at times. The pandemic needs to be looked at unemotionally and without the hair on fire breathlessness on most of the news and unfortunately on this forum also if rational decisions are to be made.

[Ms. Toad]

68. I've been tracking the virus since mid-January

This virus is different - and I'm tired of having just finished the exact same battle with work and with my right wing friends. It is not "just the flu."

Almost none of the informatino I post comes from the news - and anything I post that is triggered by a news report I check against reputable sources before I post it here. I use my mathematical background, and the predictions I am coming up with match both reality (on 1/29 I predicted the date COVID 19 woule exceed the SARS death total within 3 days). Based on the data, now that we are in the thousands, I've been within around 100 of the next day's US death total for the past week. I'm farther off for today - but it's on the low end, rather the high end.

I'm running two models. One exponential, one polynomial. The exponential model predicts 7,943 for today. The 5th order polynomia predicts 8,265. We're already well past both of those at 9269 (an increase of 45% since yesterday). It won't go up much more today, since today's reporting is mostly done. But the point is that it is growing as expected (or worse). The polynomial modes puts us at about a half million sick by April 6, the exponential model puts us at 1.2 millino by that date.

Asking hard question is one thing, but the hard questions should be based on having done some research yourself. Otherwise, it is indistinguishable from the rest of the people I encounter who (1) contend it is just the flu and then (2) push back when provided with the overwhelming evidence that it is not.

Here's a place to start: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

FWIW, I don't put any stock at all in how long someone has been here.

[GemDigger]

61. You are fighting everything that is being shown to you. You are not looking for sense.

If you don't want to believe it is serious that is your choice but stop arguing with people who are showing you facts.

And if by chance you feel sick in the near future, quarantine yourself so you don't get others killed.

[LanternWaste]

63. You should apply that to yourself as well.

You are patiently being given source after source, link after link, and reponse after reponse... yet you claim "I have not seen it yet."

Well then, simply open your eyes, read the objective data and you'll see it.

[HotTeaBag]

24. I'm bookmarking this thread, as you raise an excellent question/point

and I'm really curious to see the responses/arguments of those far smarter than I.

I've been thinking along the same lines - that we're essentially destroying our economy over something that *may* not be as bad as other pandemics, but at the same time I completely understand the fear behind the unknown as well as the 'higher than the flu' mortality rate.

Right now there are 8,000 deaths world-wide from COVID-19 almost three months in, with China already having their outbreak somewhat under control.

[Kilgore]

30. Thank you

I can't do spin and slanted and breathless reporting. If we are going to tank our economy, there has to be a damn good reason. I have not seen it yet, but open to having my mind changed also.

[Bookworm2586]

50. I'm hoping that you are right

It's horrible what this is doing to our economy. I'd hate to think the media is doing this, just for clicks.

[dpibel]

65. Forgot your sarcasm tag!

What is it you think the media is doing, just for clicks?

Reporting numbers?

Reporting the conclusions of epidemiologists and disaster management experts?

Do you honestly believe that the markets can be stampeded by, um, fake news?

Nah. You had to have been being sarcastic.

[onenote]

52. You seem to be missing the connection between the response and the outcome

To the extent China is getting their outbreak under control (assuming we accept the information they are giving out), it is a reflection of their very aggressive response. Same thing with South Korea. Compare Iran, where there was virtually no aggressive action taken.

I have no doubt that if the aggressive actions taken now succeed in holding down the impact of Covid-19 in the US, some RW'ers will be out there complaining about how the response was unnecessary and over-the-top.

I would just hope that such nonsense wouldn't come from DUers.

[HotTeaBag]

55. Please don't conflate questioning the unknown to RW talking points.

None of us know the outcome, nor whether or not the extreme measures being taken are a) too much or b) not enough.

Thanks.

[ismnotwasm]

57. I see this stuff on Facebook from....people.

I can’t. Even.

Jesus.

[Mariana]

36. Where I lived at the time, schools were closed for awhile to slow it down.

https://www.keranews.org/post/swine-flu-closing-fort-worth-schools

[Happy Hoosier]

44. It's not that hard....

H1N1 was a flu strain. Many people, especially in the west, had some level of immunity either through previous flu infections, or vaccines. Even relatively mild precautions had a good chance of The R0 (Rnaught) value of H1N1 was about 1.5... so it was MUCH less infectious than Coronavirus, so it spread much slower.

H1N1 could also be treated with Tamiflu.

So, in short, with relatively modest precautions, H1N1 has an impact you'd expect from a new flu strain, and it was largely dealt with like any other flu strain.

Current models show that without fairly dramatic precautions, COVID-19 deaths could exceed a million.

THAT is the difference.

[sanatanadharma]

51. Do nothing, keep the economy full steam for a full year and then make comparisons

All else is mental masturbation.

What is different now compared to a decade back is the lack, under republican rule, of any honesty, ethics, concern, reason, reality, trust, truth, fact or competence.

[ismnotwasm]

56. I fucking remember H1N1

I was a bad flu year for hospitals. What many people either don’t or refuse to understand, is every year is a bad flu year (in fact our isolation patients were overwhelming and my hospital had interventions in place to manage this)

Covid-19 is NOT THE FUCKING FLU. It is a flu-like virus. Strains of corona are actually quite common. Causes respiratory infections, most likely, people would think they have a bad cold.

Covid-19 is a brand new strain of the corona virus We didn’t know what it would do. We knew vulnerable people died. Vulnerable people that would ordinarily be ok, if they didn’t get the virus. Occasionally, healthy people died Nobody knew, or knows, how bad it was going to get.

The beginning of the outbreak was badly bungled. No means of testing, no prepared response. Countries with a substantial response in place, did a lot better. So we played a lot of catch up, as the virus started spreading. Also, there are actual deaths, one thing, and death rates, an entirely other thing

Italy scared the crap out of everyone.

People panicked. People apparently thought Covid-19 caused diarrhea. I guess.

Here is a good site to peruse data for yourself. Then check out the WHO site—there’s an embedded link

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

[smirkymonkey]

58. Kicked and bookmarked!