(Hat tipped to Aaron.)
Now don’t get me wrong. Influenza, whatever ithe specific strain, totally sucks. Nobody wants to catch it. People can and do die of it. H-o-w-e-v-e-r, I think we may be losing our perspective a little, en masse, on the subject of the ZOMG SWINE FLU PANDEMIC!!!!!!
Just a few items of note to keep in mind, my fellow Americans, before you succumb to panic, panic, panic!
British officials confirmed three new cases of swine flu on Thursday, bringing the nation’s total to eight.
Two of those infected live in London, and one lives in the northern city of Newcastle. Officials at Britain’s Health Protection Agency said the three “have mild symptoms and are responding to treatment at home.”
The agency, in a statement, said all eight British cases involve people who had recently traveled to Mexico.
Let me repeat the salient points: “Swine flu” is not a magic disease that teleports itself around the globe deliberately infecting people without any hint of why it would be choosing those particular people. “Swine flu” in no way resembles the Ebola virus in terms of virulency. It resembles, well, pretty much any other strain of flu in terms of virulency.
On Thursday, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 109 confirmed cases from 11 states, up from 91 cases in 10 states on Wednesday.
So, the incidence by population has gone from 0.00003 percent of the population of the United States on Wednesday to 0.00004 percent of the population on Thursday. Chances are, nobody anywhere near you personally has it. Seriously, you personally are probably All Good, especially if you don’t live in New York City.
New York City’s total of confirmed cases is at 49, and the probable cases at 5. All have links to Mexico or St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, where the virus first surfaced in New York, health officials said.
Again–it is not the Evil Juju of diseases, lying in wait for you ready to pounce without warning, cause or pattern.
Thus far, the epidemic has resulted in mild illness in many of those infected, and claimed only a confirmed eight lives in Mexico and one — a 23-month-old child from Mexico — in the United States.
And if you do somehow get it, unless you’re in the high-risk category of death from any other kind of flu–you’re very young, very old or you have other serious health problems–you are going to feel like crap for several days and then you’re going to recover and get on with your life.
Of course, you could just barricade yourself in your house and stress yourself to death. If you did, would that count as a “flu-related death?” ’cause we might see a serious jump in mortality numbers if it does.
Yes, the low mortality rate really just means follow standard flu protocol (wash hands, use hankies when sneezing, etc) and you’ll be fine. What’s of interest is that this is a specific (the same) virus spreading, and it’s doing so quite rapidly, showing us where vectors are. Basically if a high mortality strain comes through (as with the 1918 influenza pandemic), we’re sorta screwed.
It’s quite true that “normal flu” for example, has already killed 800 people in this country alone with no one noticing at all. The reason these are not of interest to pandemic watchers is that these are all from multiple strains not so much related to each other, in local regions.
The swine flu is also zoonotic, and has the potential to mutate further. It could mutate to be even more benign (and may already have, given that the mortality rates at the epicenter are much different than further out) *or* to be more lethal. That is the other reason for monitoring.
Alas, people will panic anyway. Meh.
Thanks for putting things back in perspective for us who live in large cities where “the subway is a H1N1 flu death trap I tell you!!” and people are already starting to think of alternative ways of traveling to work.
Hey ho, that just means more chance to get a seat for me