Daily emergency room baseline cases of pneumonia > 5000! in the US alone

[Health and Medicine]

I thought this was pretty interesting, as I was unaware of how common pneumonia really is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_pneumonia#United_States

Given that there are about 1.86M emergency room encounters with pneumonia per year, consider that everyday over 5000 patients show up with pneumonia in US ERs.

Goes to show how difficult it must be to separate signal from noise when it comes to early detection of COVID19 cases in the absence of mass testing!

Further, I was unaware of how deadly regular non-COVID19 pneumonia already is, with 5%-10% of all hospitalized patients dying: https://www.medicinenet.com/pneumonia_facts/article.htm

[Health and Medicine]

In the US pneumonia is the most common cause of hospitalization other than giving birth.

Pneumonia is the #1 most common reason for US children to be hospitalized.

Half of all non-immunocompromised adults hospitalized for severe pneumonia in the US are younger adults (18-57 years of age).

Half of the deaths from bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia occur in people ages 18-64.

Pneumonia is the most common cause of sepsis.

After developing pneumonia, it often takes 6-8 weeks until a patient returns to their normal level of functioning and well being.

Pneumonia can have longer term consequences. Children who survive pneumonia have increased risk for chronic lung diseases.

Adults who survive pneumonia may have worsened exercise ability, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and quality of life for months or years

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