Chron.com's Sci-Guy Eric Berger has a live chat going on about it right now: http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/04/live_chat_an_up.html here's my favorite part so far: Guest: Can I punch the next person that asks if they need to stop eating pork? Punch them right in the face... Eric Berger: Only if they're from Katy.
Awesome. He is one of the most patient laid back guys when it comes to all the stupid questions he gets. But every once in a while, he lets something like that fly out. Kind of reminds me of Clutch in that regard.
Hmm...my wife's friend just got back from a cruise to Mexico and she is sick. My son has a suppressed immune system and my wife picks this women's kids up from school every day. Would it be an overreaction to tell her friend that she can't pick her kids up until we at least confirm that she isn't sick with swine flu? I know that healthy people seem to be worse off than others with this, but my wife is freaking out pretty bad.
Can't be too careful with something like this. Especially if your kid's immune system isn't the best.
I can see if the person just got back from Europe or something, but Mexico where the actual DEATHS are happening, tell 'em call a cab... Seriously though, I wouldnt want it to be me or my son, I know that. While it might come across as overreaction, its completely rational thinking. Plus if her friend gets tested she's helping everyone else in the WORLD feel calmer
The world population was only 1.8 billion back then. Assuming the low end of the death estimates (40 million), for only 2.5 mortality rate, essentially every person on earth at the time would have had to have been infected for those numbers to work. Another interesting thing to know is that the 1918 flu came in two waves. First appearing in spring 1918 and then coming back in the fall. The orginal spring wave was much more mild and had a low mortality rate. It was the fall wave that really cause the majority of the deaths.
My wife talked to her and apparently she has been sick since well before she went to Mexico, so I doubt it is the swine flu.
Tomorrow's Washington Post... We had a brief discussion with Fed and state folks after an earthquake response scenario today... not much to do except to communicate well, make sure you know where all your people are, follow the recommendations for any flu strain, and stay at home if you are sick.
Depending on what source you read, 40 million may or may not be the "low end." On others it's 20 million. Including some of the links posted in this very thread, including those in the post you responded to.
Ok, but even assuming it's 20 million deaths, it would take the infection of almost half of the world's population at the time to come to that mortality rate. I haven't seen any estimates that put the infection rate anywhere near that percentage. So again the numbers don't come close to working for a mortality rate that low even in the post you cite.
I understand...and yet the sources are all over the place on it. There's no consensus of information on the topic, frankly....that google link I provided shows that. Numbers all over the place. One part says that of the 15,000 people living in Iceland at the time, 10,000 were infected...and 260 died. Small sample size I know. Another part says the US mortality rate was 2.5%. Here's one global estimate from that page: 4. A different estimate of the worldwide death rate to that given by Johnson and Mueller is found in “In Search of an Enigma: The "Spanish Lady"” by Rod Daniels, a Mill Hill essay from the UK National Institute of Medical Research: http://www.nimr.mrc.ac.uk/millhillessays/1998/influenza1918.htm “the so-called "Spanish Lady" or "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918-19 which infected one billion people, half the world’s population at that time, and killed between forty and fifty million. This makes it the most devastating disease of man known, surpassing even the bubonic plague of the fourteenth century, smallpox in the sixteenth century and the human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS pandemic that is happening now.” 11. “The mortality rate was more than two in every hundred who caught the disease. … Outbreaks swept through all the continents - in India, mortality was 50 deaths per 1,000 cases [ie 5%].” From “Flu: A warning from history” BBC News web site, Monday, 17 March, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2856447.stm From another comparison of SARS to the 1918 pandemic: "SARS is actually deadlier than the 1918 flu virus, killing 4 per cent of its victims compared with 2.5 per cent." http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030405/FCFLUU/Comment/Idx But the typical influenza epidemics have mortality rates at about .1%. I have no idea which numbers are correct specifically from the Spanish Flu, but I highly doubt it was 20%.
