Australian Reports of the Virus Spread

[drron]

But studies also show that many more people have had Covid than the official numbers just like the flu.

 

[Sprucegoose]

The Economist runs a study of global funeral numbers against a standardized norm...........interesting results and well supports your proposition. I suspect at times when testing was problematic in Australia and during peak reported cases (Jan 22), it seemed that there could have been around five times reported cases.

 

[dairyfloss]

But studies also show that many more people have had Covid than the official numbers just like the flu.

This.

Recently released by The Kirby Institute following Australia’s most recent serosurvey of antibodies to the virus in blood donors, was an estimate that "almost half (46.2%) of adults in Australia are estimated to have had SARS-CoV-2 by early June 2022".

Assuming all age groups were similar, that's just over 12 million people (more, by now), of whom to today 12,439 (or 0.103%) have sadly succumb to, or at least passed together with the disease caused by COVID-19.

More here: By June, almost half of Aussies had recently had COVID-19

Cheers,
Matt.

 

[Vic]

This.

Recently released by The Kirby Institute following Australia’s most recent serosurvey of antibodies to the virus in blood donors, was an estimate that "almost half (46.2%) of adults in Australia are estimated to have had SARS-CoV-2 by early June 2022".

Assuming all age groups were similar, that's just over 12 million people (more, by now), of whom to today 12,439 (or 0.103%) have sadly succumb to, or at least passed together with the disease caused by COVID-19.

More here: By June, almost half of Aussies had recently had COVID-19

Cheers,
Matt.

You mean 46.2% of blood donors, right?

That number is only presented in one table of the report, a table that shows:

Table 4. Crude SARS-CoV-2 anti-nucleocapsid protein seroprevalence among Australian blood donors, by jurisdiction, age group and sex, 9 June – 18 June 2022 (Round 2)

my bolding...

A cannot see any conclusions or interpretation in that report. It seems to just present data. I cannot see your quote on the webpage you linked.
Is this your interpretation of the data?

 

[Quickstatus]

that's just over 12 million people

… to the extent it is representative of the wider population. Only some people can give blood. Basically the elderly and the chronically ill is excluded

 

[Princess Fiona]

… to the extent it is representative of the wider population. Only some people can give blood. Basically the elderly and the chronically ill is excluded

Plus the 3/4 million people who up until the end of July were excluded from donating blood as had been in the UK in the 80’s and 90’s.

EDIT: And also sexually active gay and bisexual men.

 

[moa999]

Plus the 3/4 million people who up until the end of July were excluded from donating blood as had been in the UK

Interesting. Didn't realise this had changed.

There's actually a whole heap of exclusions which I think have pretty minimal risk per the 20-odd questions you have to answer every time, but you don't want to take risks with blood.

Just in case the tests fail, your better off preventing it originally (and one of the problems with mad cow is there is still no blood test today).
Assume part of the rationale is there has been no transfers of mad cow via blood in the UK.

 

[RooFlyer]

… to the extent it is representative of the wider population. Only some people can give blood. Basically the elderly and the chronically ill is excluded

Not to mention anyone on blood thinners ( regardless of other health status) or who have any sort of “heart issue” such as afib.

I have haemochromatosis so need therapeutic donations, but they kicked me out because of an afib episode, not withstanding that my GP and cardiologist were OK with it.

I took it up to Red Cross’ Chief medical officer, but it was a single black and white rule for everyone. I’ve been much less sympathetic to their appeals for blood ever since ( apart from thinking about the patients of course)

 

[dairyfloss]

You mean 46.2% of blood donors, right?

That number is only presented in one table of the report, a table that shows:

my bolding...

A cannot see any conclusions or interpretation in that report. It seems to just present data. I cannot see your quote on the webpage you linked.
Is this your interpretation of the data?

What I quoted (in quotation marks) was the headline and first bullet point of the Kirby Institute article (this article, which was under the text). Any other commentary was assumptions or estimates and labelled as such. Apologies if I have startled anyone with possibly further calming stats on the situation

Cheers,
Matt.

 

[Quickstatus]

stats

The thing about stats is that when stats are quoted there is an auto pile on with other stats

 

[drron]

When I did my research year I was schooled on which stats to use. Also given a list of people not to talk to or show results.

 

[JohnK]

Well nearly everyone ignored the flu precovid.

Ah yes I remember it quite well.

Someone with the flu goes to work Monday morning and by Friday afternoon more than a dozen have the flu. I've been one of those on the receiving end quite a few times. I do not want the flu again this lifetime. Awful feeling and at least a week of my life wasted.

Just because the majority do something does not make it right. With respect to the flu we got it totally wrong and it took Covid to teach us that we got it wrong.

Sad how we have no regard for others as a result of our actions.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

All I say is work in a flu ward one flu season and see if you still think flu isn't as severe.
The reason for more covid deaths is it's increased transmission rates. Not much difference in mortality rates.

so if the main issue is transmission, why are people opposed to simple protocols such as wearing masks and social distancing?

on a risk register, even though the flu and covid might have the same mortality rate, the consequences, in terms of numbers, can be very different.

 

[dairyfloss]

The thing about stats is that when stats are quoted there is an auto pile on with other stats

This is true - and did you also know that 63.68% of all statistics are also made up on the fly?

 

[Vic]

What I quoted (in quotation marks) was the headline and first bullet point of the Kirby Institute article (this article, which was under the text). Any other commentary was assumptions or estimates and labelled as such. Apologies if I have startled anyone with possibly further calming stats on the situation

Cheers,
Matt.

ahh, so not the first link in you post. Thanks for clearing it up.

 

[Quickstatus]

63.68

I think it’s 63.78

 

[MARTINE]

The thing about stats is that when stats are quoted there is an auto pile on with other stats

Yes… a stat dec(k) as it were…

 

[TheRealTMA]

I think it’s 63.78

Where's the extra three digits?

 

[RooFlyer]

Where's the extra three digits?

The only significant figure - is mine! (Harry Secombe joke)

 

[JohnK]

So let's compare mortality rates.
Figutes for covid -9.64 million cases,12,231 deaths. A mortality rate of 0.13%.

covid mortality rate in australia - Google Search

Now look at flu. @917 was a bad year but 2018 was worse. So in 2017 there were 251,147 cases.

Record years of influenza in Australia | Doherty Website

Contracted by the Commonwealth Government, the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza at the Doherty Institute is to identify what viruses are causing influenza and whether they are similar to virus strains included in the yearly...

www.doherty.edu.au

deaths are often quoted as 754 but the ABS says 1254. Why the difference? Well 754 was the number of primary deaths from flu -mortality rate 0.3%.
But 1254 was the primary plus secondary deaths from flu so the number that should be compared to the covid figure. And that is a mortality rate of 0.5%.
So do you still think the flu is much milder than covis?

Why compare Australia only?

The number of people globally that die from the flu each year is between 250K-650K depending on the severity.

The number of deaths globally from covid is 6.5M! Not quite 3 years and it is almost 2.2M deaths per year.

Based on the reported covid infections the death rate is 1.1% globally. Yes the numbers are debatable. Maybe the number of infections should be double and the deaths halved but then you need to filter out those infected twice or 3 times. Still significant numbers.

Also at 590M the number of infections are ~200M a year. I can't find a statistic for how many flu infections a year. But at 200M for covid that's quite high. And possibly even higher if not all reported.