Excess mortality rates aren’t relevant at all to the lethality of the delta variant in children relative to prior strains. Overall mortality isn’t even asking the right question, and it’s a very poor proxy even for the lethality rate of SARS-COV-2 (contingent on pervasive testing). And that we’ve eliminated influenza deaths is no argument that influenza is no longer lethal.
Unless Australians are an order of magnitude more vulnerable to COVID than elsewhere in the world, those numbers are more the result of low test rates missing infections than anything else.
In the US, the CDC estimates an actual mortality rate of 0.6%, compared to the ratio of cases/deaths of ~1.6%.
shakna|4 years ago
There has not been a single certified influenza death in Australia since 2020. [1]
It certainly appears that my health minister was downplaying the difference, not playing it up.
[0] https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavir...
[1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provis...
hcurtiss|4 years ago
wk_end|4 years ago
In the US, the CDC estimates an actual mortality rate of 0.6%, compared to the ratio of cases/deaths of ~1.6%.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...