Swine Flu Reality Check: Worry Versus Don’t Worry
In the last few days I have become quite the swine flu expert, thanks to the miracle of the Internet. Like everyone, I was curious whether we should all disconnect from the media hype or whether there was cause for legitimate concern. And after days of research I have come to this conclusion: Not sure, but leaning toward the ‘don’t worry’ side. Here, so that you can come to your own state of hesitant calm, is a list of facts arranged in two categories: worry and don’t worry.
Worry
- The H1N1 virus is a new virus created from recent mutations (or recombinations) of existing human, avian, and swine viruses. Thus, our bodies have no immunity and vaccines do not currently exist.
- Like the avian flu outbreak of 2006, this H1N1 virus has killed healthy people ages 8-50. This is bad because normal flu kills more vulnerable young and old people with preexisting health issues. Swine and avian flus kill healthy people by invoking an overly aggressive immune response called a cytokine storm. Basically you drown on foamy fluids after your immune system goes into all out terror mode, ew!
- The Mexican government reported that the death rate for their version of the swine flu virus was only 6-7%. Though they probably meant to alleviate fear, that figure is actually very alarming. The Spanish Flu of 1918 had a death rate of only 2.5%.
Don’t Worry!
- Ah, here’s where statistics are sometimes just annoying: they rely on accuracy. Many analysts and reporters are wondering if the incidence of death in Mexico has been miscalculated by undercounting the total number of affected people. In other words, if one out of every hundred people who got sick died, then the rate of death would be 1%. But what if there were actually 200 more people who were never tested because their symptoms were so mild? Then the actual rate of death would only be 1 out of 300, or 0.3%.
- Other pandemics began with a mild wave, then accelerated seasonly. For this flu, that mild wave gives us the lag time we need to produce vaccines prior to the next wave. Also, there are two anti-viral drugs that are effective against this flu. We have modern medicine on our side, and plenty of advanced notice!
- Regular old seasonal flu kills an average of 36,000 people per year. I had no idea that the number for regular flu was so high. Population-wise, that’s 36,000 out of roughly 300,000,000 for the country. Check out the paltry numbers for swine flu. Worldwide, there are maybe 200 deaths — out of 7 billion!! That’s very, very low.
It seems that worry feeds on poor information, so you can now consider yourself informed and relax. At least until it’s time to panic.
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April 30, 2009 | Filed Under Perfect World
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