FIL and MIL, along with hubs never got flu shots. MIL caught the flu and was hospitalized. FIL was hospitalized a few days later. MIL was still in the hospital because she was so weak from the flu when they thought the 87 year old woman in ill health needed a quad by-pass. She died on the operating table. I blame the flu.
FIL went from the hospital into a nursing home and died a year later. I’m the only one who blames the flu, but I know that if those old folks had not gotten sick, they probably would both still be alive.
That’s an interesting read. It certainly highlights the potential unintended consequences of trying to be “conservative” with estimates in a direction (whether high or low) that is based on some well-meaning agenda.
When people say COVID is “no worse than the flu,” I shudder. Why would anyone in their right mind risk getting the flu or anything like it? When I was in my early 20s, I got the flu year after year. The last time, it became bronchitis and then turned into pneumonia. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. From then on, I’ve always gotten a flu shot and a pneumonia shot. Now that I’m pushing 70 and a cancer survivor, it’s even more important. I suspect a certain number of flu-related deaths are the result of pneumonia, and gasping for breath is a terrible way to go.
I obviously never knew him, but when my mother was five in 1918, a first cousin died of the flu. But not anyone I knew personally.
Unfun fact: When Paul Erdos was in gestation, his two older sisters died from the 1918 flu. I suspect that that goes a long way towards explaining the relation between him and his mother (whom I met once).
I don’t know, but it seems possible, since one of my grandmothers died in December after having had a fever for several days. Could have been flu, could have been some other infection, could also have been that Alzheimer’s had destroyed too much of her brain for her to regulate her own temperature anymore.
I asked this Q at the start of the pandemic and I think we were still on vBulletin back then so the poll didn’t carry across but IIRC it was something like 50/50.
I was going to mention this. I still get a bit sad when I see the title of the reading thread. I’ve never read those threads since he died.
Offboard, I knew someone that died from pneumonia that doubled up with the flu to kill him. He was only 45. Other than being overweight by quite a bit, he had no medical problems. I don’t know if it’s true, but it seems like carrying a lot of extra weight worsens any kind of lung/breathing problems.
My understanding is that it is so extremely rare to die from the flu that it is even rare for doctors to see it happen in their entire careers.
Instead, what people die from is opportunistic infections made possible by having the flu.
The last time I had the flu, I got better and then got sick again almost immediately. When I recovered from that, I quickly started having symptoms of what I now know to be a failure of my thyroid. I now have to take thyroid medication daily for the rest of my life. I am convinced that it was an opportunistic infection that did in my thyroid.
What’s important is to be consistent in defining exactly what we mean when we call something a cause of death. The article that @Tamerlane linked upthread is well worth a read in that respect, with respect to estimating flu deaths vs COVID deaths.
The point is that with the flu, the deaths are usually caused by secondary/opportunistic infections that arise from having the infection. With covid, secondary infections are certainly possible but the covid infection itself has killed many people.
If we are going to compare flu deaths to covid deaths, we need to use the same criteria for both and be clear of which criteria we are using. There are plenty of people out there who try to minimize the danger of covid by comparing deaths directly attributed to the covid itself with all of the secondary infections that resulted from the flu.
It is when people claim that any comorbidity someone who died from covid was the real cause of death that really bothers me.
Well, yes - that was the point I was making, and why I was recommending that article.
But it’s not that simple. If somebody would not have died if they had not caught the flu, they are surely a victim of the flu. Again, nobody dies directly from AIDS, do they?
I certainly agree that we need consistent methodology, but it’s not clear to me exactly what this should mean in terms of counting something as a “cause” of death. We clearly will always have edge cases where somebody would probably die within a couple of years anyway, but flu (or COVID) pushes them over the edge. There’s never going to be a bright line.
Ideally, I guess, you’d estimate the number of person-years lost due to the disease.
My sister died from necrosis of the lungs which was caused by the flu. Those of us who lost loved ones because of the flu don’t appreciate your stupid fucking hairsplitting. Everyone knows what the poll meant.
That’s just a stupid criticism. We’re discussing the important question of counting deaths consistently so that we can make meaningful comparisons between different diseases.
But what about someone who caught two different diseases, and but for both of them, they would have survived? Giving both diseases full credit means that if we take a list of the number of people who have died from each disease, the total would be greater than the number who have actually died. Should we be counting each disease as causing some fraction of a death?
Effectively, yes - I think theoretically we should be counting excess person-years lost due to the presence of the disease. (And I guess with enough data you could make this even more sophisticated and factor in the relative quality of life in the years lost.)
Some older folks, friends of my parents (who have since also passed).
Not sure if it was the flu itself that killed them, though; they had comorbidities, so it could be the flu was enough to drag them down far enough that their heart disease killed them, etc.
There are curious standards by which death is declared. My uncle originally had on his death certificate that alcoholism killed him, but in fact, he had managed to quit the alcohol (and drugs) over 15 years before his death. One of his sisters kindly pointed that out and they went back and looked and discovered it was diabetes that did him in.
My father died of pneumonia and C-diff, of course that was exacerbated by his inability to communicate due to his Alzheimer’s but Alzheimer’s wasn’t mentioned on his death certificate. Why not? Because my mother would not grant an autopsy because she did not want us kids to know for sure that a hereditary condition was the issue. Like we didn’t know.
My step grandpa died of the flu. After winning a lung cancer battle, he didn’t have enough lung capacity to help him fight off the flu. The flu is what is on his death certificate. In reality?