Swine flu now a "full-scale pandemic"

zooterkin said:
Isn't that close enough to 0.5%?
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No because you are going to have more serious infections in the "confirmed" group. It will skew your case fatality number.

You need to be using suspected cases vs confirmed fatalities.

But then you also have to account for the capability of different countries to detect cases both suspected and confirmed. You need to know how many suspect cases were fatal because there are bound to be some that died before they could be tested, and so on.
 
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ponderingturtle said:
So we are left with 7 deaths vs the thousands in a typical flu season.
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No, we have however many deaths we are up to now in a fraction of the time the 36,000 deaths occur seasonally and you want to compare these numbers as if they are both annual totals.

Apples - Oranges

Try again at the end of next flu season. Or, use Australia's numbers in a couple months.
 
skeptigirl said:
Is this a joke?
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No, but I'd have to laugh if someone who had no obvious signs of illness said to me, also with no signs of illness:

"I'm not shaking hands with you because I'm worried about catching or spreading swine flu or some other disease."
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
No, but I'd have to laugh if someone who had no obvious signs of illness said to me, also with no signs of illness:

"I'm not shaking hands with you because I'm worried about catching or spreading swine flu or some other disease."
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Ivor, have you no clue that infections are frequently spread before the onset of symptoms? With flu it is infectious about the same time symptoms start, however, there are many other infections which are contagious before symptoms start and after symptoms have ended.
 
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The Painter said:
Of course this is true. I think the first death in the USA was a Mexican child who was brought to the US for treatment because they don't have it in Mexico.
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This sucker's a species jumper. It jumped from bird to pig then to human. That is making plenty of people very nervous.
 
Nosi said:
This sucker's a species jumper. It jumped from bird to pig then to human. That is making plenty of people very nervous.
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That is an amazing claim. Can you please document all the species jumping that you claim. I'm a little skeptical
 
skeptigirl said:
Ivor, have you no clue that infections are frequently spread before the onset of symptoms? With flu it is infectious about the same time symptoms start, however, there are many other infections which are contagious before symptoms start and after symptoms have ended.
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Rather than getting people paranoid about touching other people's hands/bodies, how about just telling them to wash/sanitise their hands and keep them away from their eyes, nose and mouth?
 
skeptigirl said:
No, we have however many deaths we are up to now in a fraction of the time the 36,000 deaths occur seasonally and you want to compare these numbers as if they are both annual totals.

Apples - Oranges

Try again at the end of next flu season. Or, use Australia's numbers in a couple months.
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And, of course, remember to scale it for your population differences.
 
skeptigirl said:
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.
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One thing I've wondered about with the age distribution - could this just be an artefact of the early outbreak? Presumably the people spreading the disease to begin with are those who have been travelling around, and meeting lots of people. Obviously this is going to be heavily weighted towards young adults and will tend to exclude the very young and very old. How likely is it that the actual disease itself is fairly normal and that we will see the more common age distribution once it's had a bit of time to spread out and settle down?
 
The Painter said:
That is an amazing claim. Can you please document all the species jumping that you claim. I'm a little skeptical
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So far, pigs are susceptible, birds are susceptible, and humans, hence the name pig-bird-flu. A 'talking head' for the WHO on the news called this virus a 'genetic mutt'. (Name I forget.) It has bits of a pig virus, two separate human viruses, and one mild bird flu virus. (I can't hotlink yet, but a Google will verify.)

There is speculation that the animal viruses matured in intensive factory farms where intensive overcrowding of animals is the norm. Woos speculate that this virus is an escapee from a weapons lab.

There have been news reports of this virus hopping species. For example; a man in Canada went on vacation to Mexico, caught the flu, then came home and infected his swine herd. That was the most vivid. Man and most of the pigs are recovered or are recovering as of the news report, which was a while ago, a Google will turn it up.
 
Cuddles said:
One thing I've wondered about with the age distribution - could this just be an artefact of the early outbreak? Presumably the people spreading the disease to begin with are those who have been travelling around, and meeting lots of people. Obviously this is going to be heavily weighted towards young adults and will tend to exclude the very young and very old. How likely is it that the actual disease itself is fairly normal and that we will see the more common age distribution once it's had a bit of time to spread out and settle down?
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That is a possibility. One other factor being looked at is if those over 50 may have developed an immunity to this strain of flu from an exposure to a seasonal flu strain in the past. It may not be the same virus but may have similar immune markers that allow for this resistance.
 
I know that my mother had a form of swine flu in 1970-something. She was sick! That may give some partial immunity, having had exposure to one or two components of this mutt-virus.
 
Cuddles said:
One thing I've wondered about with the age distribution - could this just be an artefact of the early outbreak? Presumably the people spreading the disease to begin with are those who have been travelling around, and meeting lots of people. Obviously this is going to be heavily weighted towards young adults and will tend to exclude the very young and very old. How likely is it that the actual disease itself is fairly normal and that we will see the more common age distribution once it's had a bit of time to spread out and settle down?
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It could have been artifact but now it appears to be a real effect. That doesn't mean by next season it won't change or that no people over 50 are getting it at all. We just had our first King County death from this strain and it was a 70 yr old.
 
Nosi said:
I know that my mother had a form of swine flu in 1970-something. She was sick! That may give some partial immunity, having had exposure to one or two components of this mutt-virus.
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The swine flu strain from the 70s infected very few people so it would not account for widespread immunity.
 
skeptigirl said:
The swine flu strain from the 70s infected very few people so it would not account for widespread immunity.
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Yes, but aren't you talking 'confirmed' cases? There seems to be a huge ratio of unconfirmed:confirmed with flu. All I've got to go on is that in the 50's, 90% of the old folks showed an immunity to the Spanish Flu, when at the time of the pandemic, not nearly that many had the overt sickness.
 
Let's make a list of other "Pandemics" in the world rigth now:

I'll start:

We all have staph germs.

Our intestines have e-coli.

OOoo, what about the athlete's foot pandemic?

Chapped lips. Or does it count, being 'seasonal'?

Or the "Pandemic Hype" pandemic, causing panic enough to kill every last pig in Egypt. I guess the swine flu is pretty deadly- to Egyptian pigs. I wonder what strain of pigs they had been raising there?
 
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