World health chief says it may be too late to contain swine flu | Hacker News Reader

World health chief says it may be too late to contain swine flu

mercurynews.com

22 pointsswombat12 comments

More information about the Spanish Flu, for those who somehow haven't heard of it, is available on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

Extra nice quotes:

The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but is estimated at 2.5 to 5% of the human population, with 20% or more of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent.

This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the Black Death.

Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old.

You seem to speak as if the swine flu is a new outbreak of the Spanish flu, it isn't.

According to the article, it has a similar mortality rate, and the age profile of its victims is similar.

That's not much data, I'll grant you, but it's enough to suggest that it could be fairly similar.

Sixty-eight deaths from around one thousand infections is a lethality of 7%. That alone should make us take this very seriously until we have more data.

In the State of Mexico (metro area of Mexico City) there has been 3 deaths out of 44 cases of Influenza (not all confirmed to be H1N1) which is 6.8% lethality

Update: On San Luis Potosi (some 400Km north Mexico City, second biggest outbreak) has been reported 62 cases and 5 deaths, 8% http://bit.ly/15VOOt

In these sorts of situations, people who have mild cases of the same strain don't even seek treatment. That means the denominator -- the actual number of infections -- is much higher than initial/limited reports, and the fatality rate correspondingly lower.

So far, all confirmed cases in the US have been mild. And they probably caught it from others who got over it without triggering any alarm. So don't head for the hills based on early fatality extrapolations from Mexico just yet.

The article is a bit alarmist. Although "humans have no natural immunity", it looks like it responds well to drugs.

I am not losing much sleep over thoughts of dying from this.

The real question is, will there be a large amount of variance among populations in different countries? You cannot necessarily extrapolate from Mexico City to other places since climate, diet, and no doubt other factors, all play a role.

WTF is a "world health chief" ?

WTF is a "world health chief" ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_chan

A famous quote comes to mind...

http://bash.org/?4780

quote:

"<Thumb> do you know of any major organizations that are similar the CDC?

<Lucent> who?

<Thumb> center for disease control

<Lucent> i said WHO

<Thumb> what? i'm asking you

<Lucent> World Health Organization"

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