Posted on 03/27/2020 8:05:29 AM PDT by Enlightened1
NEW YORK — An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with The Associated Press.
Flu experts knew it was a very bad season, but at least one found size of the estimate surprising.
“That’s huge,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert. The tally was nearly twice as much as what health officials previously considered a bad year, he said.
In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the CDC.
Last fall and winter, the U.S. went through one of the most severe flu seasons in recent memory. It was driven by a kind of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths, particularly among young children and the elderly.
The season peaked in early February. It was mostly over by the end of March, although some flu continued to circulate.
Making a bad year worse, the flu vaccine didn’t work very well. Experts nevertheless say vaccination is still worth it, because it makes illnesses less severe and save lives.
“I’d like to see more people get vaccinated,” Redfield told the AP at an event in New York. “We lost 80,000 people last year to the flu.”
CDC officials do not have exact counts of how many people die from flu each year. Flu is so common that not all flu cases are reported, and flu is not always listed on death certificates. So the CDC uses statistical models, which are periodically revised, to make estimates.
(Excerpt) Read more at statnews.com ...
My best friend is still working as a batallion chief on the department I served on for 25 years. He said that they have been overwhelmed by young people with no symptoms who fear they have had an exposure and are demanding that they be tested. But thus far the tests are only being administered around here to people in groups at risk with symptoms, politicians and celebrities.
We were the epicenter in the US... It is a little surprising to me given the hype that the vast majority of dead are still from nursing homes who had a lot of vulnerable people.
And the level of PC thinking around here is probably similar to Italy.
Northern Italy has tens of thousands of Chinese workers coming in and out. Southern Italy doesn’t.
To me, that’s barely interesting.
You’re telling me HOW the virus was introduced to Northern Italy.
I get it — lots of fashion, lots of travel, lots of people from China coming an going. WHAM! Northern Italy has the virus!
Does no one from Northern Italy ever travel to Southern Italy?
If this virus is easily transmissible, could it spread from Milan to Florence to Rome to Salerno? Slowly marching from North to South?
Someone posted that the South is seeing some higher caseloads. OK. That’s somewhat logical. But overall, it seems like the Chinese came into Milan and surrounding areas, gave everyone the virus and then the virus just sort of “pools” there and most of Italy sits back and says, “Wow. I’m glad that’s not us.”
The 2 big concerns are ease of transmission and mortality rate. From what I see, that ease of transmission thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Media's take:
Trump responsible for the death of 80,000 Americans!
One ship arrived in NY this morning.
Southern Italy didn’t have direct flights of foreign workers from China into Prado in the North, home of the Italian garment industry.
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