Writer's Block: Swine Times

[cordova829]

I didn't know LiveJournal was being swallowed by this "pandemic" thing. You know why they call it a pandemic, right? Because the word should cause fear and pandemonia.

Regular Flu Deaths in the US (Common Influenza over a 15 week period) - 25,924* deaths
Swine Flu Deaths in the US (H1N1 influenza virus) - 1 death

Which, pray tell, should I worry more

Comments

[murstein]

Regular Flu Deaths in the US (Common Influenza over a 15 week period) - 25,924* deaths

*numbers straight from the CDC website

Um. Where on the CDC web site is that? When I went to look, I found that the CDC estimates the annual "flu related" deaths at 36,000. And their "related" numbers appear mostly to be "the flu weakened him, then something else did him in."

Typically, less than 0.1% of those who get the flu die from it. With 109 cases and 1 death in the US, we're running at 0.9% mortality, or almost an order of magnitude more dangerous than the ordinary flu. If we peek our noses outside our borders, we can see that there are 257 cases and 8 deaths, or a mortality rate of 3.1%.

So, yeah. It looks like it's only 30+ times more deadly than the average flu. And the fact that ordinary flu deaths are infants and the elderly, while the deaths from this one are the healthy folks who just get over the ordinary flu. Nothing to get worked up about at all. I'm sure those epidemiologists who are seeing parallels with the 1918 flu just need to get out of the lab more.