Whatever the characteristics of the illness, swine flu makes for virulent and highly resistant discourse. I hear a lot about how many people are infected and how many people are dying, but I haven't heard anything that indicates a different magnitude from what I would expect from garden variety winter influenza. So I checked the numbers:
Using numbers from globalsecurity.org, I come up with a mortality rate for seasonal influenza (normal flu) of about 0.13%. Of every 10 000 people who are infected with the flu, we can expect 13 to die.
Using numbers from a microbiologist and professor of clinical medicine at ANU, of 10 000 who get H1N1 swine flu, about 10 will die.
Since these sources didn't report their sample sizes, and I haven't seen any raw data, I can't calculate whether this difference is statistically significant. And I'm frankly not worried or keen enough to start writing emails to the CDC. However, it's a fair bet that swine flu is about as lethal as regular flu, if not a little gentler.
There are some worrying reports about much higher rates in Mexico and elsewhere. But really, when was the last time you heard about the mortality rate in Mexico during a normal bout of the flu? It doesn't really get reported, and I suspect there's a good reason why I'd rather be in a hospital north of the border, so the difference is likely just due to environmental differences like hygiene and healthcare provision. Again, it's a low-data conclusion, but it's reasonable.
I hope that the attention devoted to it is just a factor of a slow news season and light fearmongering by interested parties. I hope it's just that banal. Still, let's keep some perspective.
Boy, I guess I'm really getting my rant on.
Using numbers from globalsecurity.org, I come up with a mortality rate for seasonal influenza (normal flu) of about 0.13%. Of every 10 000 people who are infected with the flu, we can expect 13 to die.
Using numbers from a microbiologist and professor of clinical medicine at ANU, of 10 000 who get H1N1 swine flu, about 10 will die.
Since these sources didn't report their sample sizes, and I haven't seen any raw data, I can't calculate whether this difference is statistically significant. And I'm frankly not worried or keen enough to start writing emails to the CDC. However, it's a fair bet that swine flu is about as lethal as regular flu, if not a little gentler.
There are some worrying reports about much higher rates in Mexico and elsewhere. But really, when was the last time you heard about the mortality rate in Mexico during a normal bout of the flu? It doesn't really get reported, and I suspect there's a good reason why I'd rather be in a hospital north of the border, so the difference is likely just due to environmental differences like hygiene and healthcare provision. Again, it's a low-data conclusion, but it's reasonable.
I hope that the attention devoted to it is just a factor of a slow news season and light fearmongering by interested parties. I hope it's just that banal. Still, let's keep some perspective.
Boy, I guess I'm really getting my rant on.
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