<story><title>Public health interventions and epidemic intensity during the 1918 flu pandemic</title><url>https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostromo</author><text>The headline is editorialized in a way that is misleading.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Early implementation of certain interventions, including closure of schools, churches, and theaters, was associated with lower peak death rates, but no single intervention showed an association with improved aggregate outcomes for the 1918 phase of the pandemic.&lt;p&gt;In other words, a similar amount of people died regardless of these interventions, but the cases were spread out over a longer time period.  They also note that the virus spreads as soon as interventions are relaxed, suggesting many cities just delayed the infection.&lt;p&gt;Edit: thanks for the comments below - my comment was just to point out that these interventions didn&amp;#x27;t cut the death rate in half, as a quick reading of the submitted headline might suggest.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sliken</author><text>Well keep in mind for COV19 that your survival rate will be much higher if there&amp;#x27;s enough beds&amp;#x2F;people to treat you.  Looks like with an overburdened medical system the lethality for those going to the hospital is somewhere under 5%.  For hospitals not overburdened it&amp;#x27;s under 1%.</text></comment>
<story><title>Public health interventions and epidemic intensity during the 1918 flu pandemic</title><url>https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostromo</author><text>The headline is editorialized in a way that is misleading.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Early implementation of certain interventions, including closure of schools, churches, and theaters, was associated with lower peak death rates, but no single intervention showed an association with improved aggregate outcomes for the 1918 phase of the pandemic.&lt;p&gt;In other words, a similar amount of people died regardless of these interventions, but the cases were spread out over a longer time period.  They also note that the virus spreads as soon as interventions are relaxed, suggesting many cities just delayed the infection.&lt;p&gt;Edit: thanks for the comments below - my comment was just to point out that these interventions didn&amp;#x27;t cut the death rate in half, as a quick reading of the submitted headline might suggest.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>macintux</author><text>Well, sorta:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Cities in which multiple interventions were implemented at an early phase of the epidemic also showed a trend toward lower cumulative excess mortality, but the difference was smaller (≈20%) and less statistically significant than that for peak death rates.</text></comment>