Swine Flu
The End of the World is NIGH! It's the PLAGUE!!!
lolz
From a medical article on WebMD.com today, the confirmed cases in the U.S. now stand at 91. All the news media are raving about a global pandemic, yet I'm still wondering if this very important word is being thrown about a little too liberally for this situation. You can see the definition of "pandemic" here. While this is certainly a scary illness, and it is popping up on 4 continents, it's hardly widespread within the population.
For a more accurate perspective of infection, the current confirmed cases across the entire United States today is 91, right? The last U.S. Census counted our population at 304,059,724. A little math will tell you the percentage (infected divided by total): 2.99e-7, or 0.000029%.
Don't get me wrong, influenza can spread rapidly in a population. Ask anyone who's worked in a call center or retail store. It can definitely spread rapidly in schools. It is also a very frightening strain, because it's not one the human immune system will know how to fight off once infected, which could lead to high mortality rates.
However, it has not spread rapidly yet. It's good to know that the WHO and CDC are watching this carefully. But before yelling about it being the plague of plagues, we should remember the cautionary tale of The boy who cried wolf. Why? Because if you start saying that now, and it doesn't really spread to the rest of the US soon, people will start thinking it was a false alarm and ignore further reports of it. Right now, there are no known cases in the Northwest region.
To quote from the original article I linked above,
Here is the CDC's latest tally of lab-confirmed swine flu cases:
lolz
From a medical article on WebMD.com today, the confirmed cases in the U.S. now stand at 91. All the news media are raving about a global pandemic, yet I'm still wondering if this very important word is being thrown about a little too liberally for this situation. You can see the definition of "pandemic" here. While this is certainly a scary illness, and it is popping up on 4 continents, it's hardly widespread within the population.
For a more accurate perspective of infection, the current confirmed cases across the entire United States today is 91, right? The last U.S. Census counted our population at 304,059,724. A little math will tell you the percentage (infected divided by total): 2.99e-7, or 0.000029%.
Don't get me wrong, influenza can spread rapidly in a population. Ask anyone who's worked in a call center or retail store. It can definitely spread rapidly in schools. It is also a very frightening strain, because it's not one the human immune system will know how to fight off once infected, which could lead to high mortality rates.
However, it has not spread rapidly yet. It's good to know that the WHO and CDC are watching this carefully. But before yelling about it being the plague of plagues, we should remember the cautionary tale of The boy who cried wolf. Why? Because if you start saying that now, and it doesn't really spread to the rest of the US soon, people will start thinking it was a false alarm and ignore further reports of it. Right now, there are no known cases in the Northwest region.
To quote from the original article I linked above,
Here is the CDC's latest tally of lab-confirmed swine flu cases:
- New York: 51 cases
- Texas: 16 cases
- California: 14 cases
- Kansas: 2 cases
- Massachusetts: 2 cases
- Michigan: 2 cases
- Arizona: 1 case
- Indiana: 1 case
- Nevada: 1 case
- Ohio: 1 case