how to find death rates from FLU?

[newmum35]

anyone here know how to use well the CDC website can help me out?

I'm trying to find statistics of # of deaths from flu/pneumonia (we know they group those together as one) from various years.

I managed to find the most recent (2006) data at:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf

This surprised me a bit because we always hear the 36,000 quote that die every year from influenza and pneumonia, but here it says over 56,000 have died in 2006.

SO, how do I find the data from previous years?

[amnesiac]

You might try the CDC Wonder database: http://wonder.cdc.gov/welcome.html

These were some numbers that came up several years ago from that database:

Year Flu Deaths Pneumonia Deaths Combined
1999 1,665 62,065 63,730
2000 1,765 63,548 65,313
2001 --257 61,5777 62,034

[tanyalynn]

This page may be helpful too...
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

[Noelle C.]

Wow, looks like the number of flu deaths is very low, and the number is only higher when adding in pneumonia. Way to go, CDC, whatta way to inflate the flu death numbers!

[amnesiac]

An interesting thing to know would be exactly which of the pneumonia deaths were viral (due to influenza infection), which were bacterial pneumonia secondary to influenza & which were completely unrelated other infections.

[tanyalynn]

Originally Posted by amnesiac

An interesting thing to know would be exactly which of the pneumonia deaths were viral (due to influenza infection), which were bacterial pneumonia secondary to influenza & which were completely unrelated other infections.

The link I included shows the seasonality of pneumonia & influenza mortality (about halfway down the page), but unfortunately as a % instead of total numbers. When CDC says "Influenza kills 36,000 people per year in the US" I'm wondering if they're using the total for the year, or only the wintertime increase (which still presumably wouldn't all be related to influenza) for that number.

I'm not sure how to translate that into actual numbers of people.

[amnesiac]

There are some other issues with that - they might give you an idea of trends but they are not national numbers since the data is from only 122 cities. They also do not distinguish among viral pneumonia from influenza infection, bacterial pneumonia secondary to influenza or other pneumonias unrelated to influenza.

122 Cities Mortality Reporting System — Each week, the vital statistics offices of 122 cities report the total number of death certificates received and the number of those for which pneumonia or influenza was listed as the underlying or contributing cause of death by age group. The percentage of all deaths due to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) are compared with a seasonal baseline and epidemic threshold value calculated for each week. The seasonal baseline of P&I deaths is calculated using a periodic regression model that incorporates a robust regression procedure applied to data from the previous five years. An increase of 1.645 standard deviations above the seasonal baseline of P&I deaths is considered the “epidemic threshold,” i.e., the point at which the observed proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia or influenza was significantly higher than would be expected at that time of the year in the absence of substantial influenza-related mortality.

[bbrandonsmom]

Is there a page showing how many deaths there have been all year so far? I can't find it.

[newmum35]

Originally Posted by amnesiac

You might try the CDC Wonder database: http://wonder.cdc.gov/welcome.html

These were some numbers that came up several years ago from that database:

Year Flu Deaths Pneumonia Deaths Combined
1999 1,665 62,065 63,730
2000 1,765 63,548 65,313
2001 --257 61,5777 62,034

Thank you - great site. I see where it says 1979-1998 but they group all the deaths from all these years combined. Can I see for instance how many deaths from flu in just one year (1979 or 1980 for example)?? - also the crude rate (which tells how many deaths per 100,000 people) is very helpful for comparison purposes in years where the population differs greatly.

[ema-adama]

I have tried to find these numbers too, and was rather frustrated with the deaths being expressed as a percentage. I could not find any raw data on the number of deaths.

[amnesiac]

Originally Posted by newmum35

Thank you - great site. I see where it says 1979-1998 but they group all the deaths from all these years combined. Can I see for instance how many deaths from flu in just one year (1979 or 1980 for example)?? - also the crude rate (which tells how many deaths per 100,000 people) is very helpful for comparison purposes in years where the population differs greatly.

Under "organize table layout" you would need to select "group results by year" so that each year is separated out.