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> aren’t there very few flu deaths confirmed by testing?

Is this true? An anecdote, but both times I and/or my partner had fever and flu-like symptoms, a flu test was the first thing performed by the doctor.



Yup! Only about 20% of flu deaths are confirmed by test. The rest are estimated by an algorithm (which the OP alluded to)

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The CDC explains its methodology here. There are valid reasons to assume influenza deaths are higher than confirmed tested deaths. But many of these apply to coronavirus as well: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm




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