Swine flu now a "full-scale pandemic"

drkitten said:
Yes, let's.

The population of the USA is about 300,000,000 people.

If half in the USA caught H1N1 (which appears to be a not-unreasonable working assumption, given the way it's spreading), that would be 150,000,000 cases. If the 0.5% death rate holds constant, that would yield about 750,000 deaths.

More than twenty times as many people as are killed on average.

Reason for concern?
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No, because you are forgetting that the 1/2% death rate is in "CONFIRMED" victims. Probably much less than 1% of 'victims' get it bad enough to ever be 'confirmed'. Didn't the CDC say a few weks ago that there were 100,000 cases already? And um 7 deaths? So, half the population gets it, 1:10,000 die, total deaths 15,000. So we are talking fewer deaths than the usual seasonal flu. But it is one more season.
 
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drkitten said:
All right, I'll use the LOW end of the figures Damien Evans suggested -- 10% of the population, instead of 50%, catches the flu.

That means that instead of seeing 20x the normal number of deaths, we see 4x the normal number of deaths.

That's still a serious change from the norm.
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Agreed.

Yes, that's definitely a good start. I hope you're not foolish enough to think it ends there.
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Who said it ended there? :rolleyes:
 
PogoPedant said:
Again, going by WHO numbers, it kills about 0.5% right now. Using only WHO numbers, its been dropping from about 9% during the first few days (obviously wildly inaccurate) to about 0.5% now. It seemed far more dramatic in the early days, and it was below 1% already on the fifteenth of May.
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So it would seem that there must be many improperly diagnosed deaths in the US if the infection numbers are accurate.
 
ponderingturtle said:
So it would seem that there must be many improperly diagnosed deaths in the US if the infection numbers are accurate.
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My layman's guess is that the actual number of infected in Mexico is much higher than the reported one. The death-rate in the US is about 0.2 percent, while in Mexico it is 1.7 percent. The difference should, in my mind, be caused by different reporting standards.

I base this on the assumption that US medical institutions are better at diagnosing and reporting, and the assumption that Americans will go to the doctor earlier than Mexicans. Both assumptions are gut feeling, nothing else.
 
Yeah, but it looked as if ponderingturtle had taken that rate and calculated the number of infected, which seems wrong somehow.
 
zooterkin said:
Isn't that close enough to 0.5%?
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The issue is how many people were infected but not confirmed cases. In many places like NYC there was a point were they stopped testing everyone who got a little sick for swine flu, and only the people who got more ill.

So you could well be saying that it is something like 0.5% of cases that are serious enough to warrent testing. This says nothing about how many minor cases there are that did not get tested.

So you are using a scewed data set.

For example the CDC estimates that there have been more than 100,000 cases in the US, but only a few thousand confirmed and are only up to 7 deaths.

So it seems that the fatality rates are a virtualy meaningless statistic as a real measurement.
 
ponderingturtle said:
So it seems that the fatality rates are a virtualy meaningless statistic as a real measurement.
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This is true, except for those people who are trying to use any statistic they can to re-affirm their biases. I won't name any names, but there's been a few around here.
 
So at least 99.5% of us have no fear of dying from the current media panic.

No film at eleven.
 
Well, it's not that simple.

Yeah, 99.whatever% of the people out there in nations with adequate healthcare don't have to worry about dying from swine flu-- provided they (at minimum) take the same steps for prevention and treatment that they would for seasonal influenza, contributing to both keeping it from spreading and in keeping yourself well. Considering most people are able to do that sort of thing, then keeping yourself safe is a matter of common sense above all else.
 
casebro said:
So at least 99.5% of us have no fear of dying from the current media panic.

No film at eleven.
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OK, fine, so you can safely ignore it. You are, of course, free to do so

Man has been fighting disease for as long as we've been sentient enough to realize that disease exists. Only lately have we begun to understand the reasons and bases for being able to do something constructive about it. Public health is trying things out, trying to find a way to assess the problems, make you aware of what is going on and at the same time not overly bothering you, but that involves a number of tricky interplays with other experimental social systems, like the media. Pardon them while they try to adjust the system to your specifications.

Really, casebro, no one wants to inflict their angst upon you, I don't think. If you think they're all conspiring to get you out of your easy chair, then quit watching the TV (or other irritating news source) seems an obvious solution.
 
ponderingturtle said:
The issue is how many people were infected but not confirmed cases. In many places like NYC there was a point were they stopped testing everyone who got a little sick for swine flu, and only the people who got more ill.

So you could well be saying that it is something like 0.5% of cases that are serious enough to warrent testing. This says nothing about how many minor cases there are that did not get tested.

So you are using a scewed data set.

For example the CDC estimates that there have been more than 100,000 cases in the US, but only a few thousand confirmed and are only up to 7 deaths.

So it seems that the fatality rates are a virtualy meaningless statistic as a real measurement.
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Now, what is the effect if the number of deaths is also "confirmed", and the actual number may well be higher? After all, 24,000 or so deaths happen every day in the US, many of vague but obviously non-violent symptoms, and are pursued no further (let alone Mexico).

The number of confirmed cases or disease and death are all we have to go on; all else is just wild speculation. Stick to them if you want to derive statistics.
 
shadron said:
Now, what is the effect if the number of deaths is also "confirmed", and the actual number may well be higher? After all, 24,000 or so deaths happen every day in the US, many of vague but obviously non-violent symptoms, and are pursued no further (let alone Mexico).

The number of confirmed cases or disease and death are all we have to go on; all else is just wild speculation. Stick to them if you want to derive statistics.
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So we are left with 7 deaths vs the thousands in a typical flu season.
 
Current numbers from the CDC: confirmed/probable cases, 17,855. Deaths, 45. One in 400 of the worst cases die, that is 1/4 of 1 %.

Which datum is NOT making the 10:00 news.
 
ponderingturtle said:
If there is a 0.5% fatality rate and there have been 150 fatalities then there must have been around 30,000 cases. Simple math.
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I was not involved in your case fatality rate debate. So I take it your post wasn't directed at me?


However, since you've dragged me into it and I think a more evidence based approach would be better to resolve the question, CDC published this a month ago:


Update: Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Infections --- Worldwide, May 6, 2009

Just looking at confirmed vs suspected cases gives you a better idea of the multiplier to use:
Number of confirmed (N = 822) and suspected (N = 11,356) cases of novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infection, by date of illness onset --- Mexico, March 11--May 3, 2009
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Roughly rounding that off to more easily managed numbers it translates into 11,000 cases for every 1,000 confirmed cases in a country with epidemiological capabilities like Mexico. I would imagine the actual cases vs confirmed cases in the US was a tad lower, but maybe not by as much as one would think.


The problem, however, is in trying to predict the course of this pandemic, we cannot use averages. This virus is not affecting the population evenly. More people over 50 are NOT getting it than get seasonal flu. That skews the case fatality rate considerably.

The vaccine will be on the market for this strain before it returns to the northern hemisphere. But it is still circulating though numbers are waning in some northern countries.


There are just too many unknowns to be wasting time arguing predictions here, IMO.
 
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