{"id":139,"date":"2020-10-07T23:19:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T23:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=139"},"modified":"2020-11-08T23:21:11","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T23:21:11","slug":"if-it-werent-for-the-flu-vaccine-how-deadly-would-the-flu-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=139","title":{"rendered":"If it weren\u2019t for the flu vaccine, how deadly would the flu be?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Question:<\/strong> This infographic from Politico<\/em><\/a> got me to wondering, if it weren\u2019t for the flu vaccine, how deadly would the flu be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer:<\/strong> I added the Politico <\/em>infographic below for ease of reference. Good news [for making my job answering this question easy!] is that CDC\u2019s Influenza Division estimates the burden of flu illness and death averted by vaccination in the United States. As CDC reports<\/a>, \u201cduring 2018\u20132019, flu vaccination prevented an estimated 4.4 million influenza illnesses, 2.3 million influenza-associated medical visits, 58,000 influenza-associated hospitalizations, and 3,500 influenza-associated deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of infections and deaths averted will change yearly, largely depending on a) the severity of the flu; b) the vaccine effectiveness; and c) vaccine coverage. For example, the seasonal flu had high severity in 2017\u20132018, with CDC finding that <\/a>\u201can estimated 8000 (95% CrI, 1100\u201321 000) influenza-associated deaths were prevented by vaccination (9% of expected deaths, overall; 95% CrI, 1%\u201320%). Influenza vaccination prevented an estimated 39% (95% CrI, 30%\u201345%) of influenza-related mortality in children aged 6 months\u20134 years.\u201d If you want to read more, this paper published last year in Clinical Infectious Disease<\/em> gives an overview of how such estimates are made and provides more detail on the 2017\u201318 flu infections averted, \u201cEffects of Influenza Vaccination in the United States During the 2017\u20132018 Influenza Season.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose the upshot here is that if we were to try to compare apples to apples (e.g. two viruses that don\u2019t have vaccinations), we\u2019d still find that COVID is far more lethal than seasonal influenza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1. COVID-19 is more deadly than seasonal flu <\/strong>(from Politico<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: This infographic from Politico got me to wondering, if it weren\u2019t for the flu vaccine, how deadly would the flu be? Answer: I added the Politico infographic below for ease of reference. Good news [for making my job answering this question easy!] is that CDC\u2019s Influenza Division estimates the burden of flu illness and death averted by vaccination in the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40,35,22,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-disease-severity","category-influenza","category-mortality","category-vaccines","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/October-7.png?fit=1461%2C1463&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}