Flu Pandemic Statistics

[Emma]

Bill is just as clueless as you are.

Instead of quoting and repeating yourself like a damned broken record, go back and read why you are dead wrong.

 

[Emma]

Statistics are easily doctored and they all do it anyway.

I don't give a damn if you bet your life against the statistics, but don't gamble my family's and my health, as well.

Every un-vaccinated person can serve as a breeding ground for H1N1, enabling the virus to mutate resistance against any vaccines and become more lethal.

You are a hoot!!!

And you're an idiot.

 

[eagleseven]

Repost your article 1000 times, Sinatra, it's still wrong. Go back to wherever you graduated and demand a refund, because you were ripped off.

Assuming you have a degree, that is.

You are making a fool of yourself, because you made an obvious error. You are incorrectly assuming that flu cases increase linearly, and comparing that projection with the total cases during a given year.

The problem with your assumption is that disease spreads exponentially. As clearly indicated in my OP, the vast majority of hospitalizations occur at the end of the flu season, not at the start.

You are looking at the seed, and comparing it to a full-grown tree. "This tree is so much larger than this seed, how could this seed ever be larger than this tree?"

This is why you need a PhD to be a epidemiologist...

 

[eagleseven]

Influenza is one of the most hypervariable viruses that we know. In any one infected patient, the influenza virus is mutating literally thousands upon thousands of times.

Most of these mutations destroy the virus, but the ones that don't, survive. If just one mutation makes the virus more pathogenic, it will be rapidly spread to other organisms (er, people), and cause more illness.

So how do viral resistances develop? Say, in a given patient, 5 out of the 1,000,000 viruses in his lungs mutate to be resistant to tamiflu. The doctors then administer tamiflu, and only the 5 mutated viruses survive. Those mutated viruses then multiply, until you have 1,000,000 tamiflu-resistant viruses.

One opportune sneeze, and those tamiflu-resistant viruses spread to others.


Now do you see why have just one million people who refuse to get vaccinated will provide a MASSIVE breeding ground for the virus to mutate? If just one person who refuses the vaccine, mutates a version of H1N1 that circumvents our vaccine, we're fucked.

The vaccine-resistant H1N1 will then go on to re-infect everyone, thus starting the deadly 1918-style waves.

 

[Si modo]

Influenza is one of the most hypervariable viruses that we know. In any one infected patient, the influenza virus is mutating literally thousands upon thousands of times.

Most of these mutations destroy the virus, but the ones that don't, survive. If just one mutation makes the virus more pathogenic, it will be rapidly spread to other organisms (er, people), and cause more illness.

So how do viral resistances develop? Say, in a given patient, 5 out of the 1,000,000 viruses in his lungs mutate to be resistant to tamiflu. The doctors then administer tamiflu, and only the 5 mutated viruses survive. Those mutated viruses then multiply, until you have 1,000,000 tamiflu-resistant viruses.

One opportune sneeze, and those tamiflu-resistant viruses spread to others.


Now do you see why have just one million people who refuse to get vaccinated will provide a MASSIVE breeding ground for the virus to mutate? If just one person who refuses the vaccine, mutates a version of H1N1 that circumvents our vaccine, we're fucked.

The vaccine-resistant H1N1 will then go on to re-infect everyone, thus starting the deadly 1918-style waves.

Yup. And with my luck, I will get sick with a mutation.

Pisses me off.

 

[Sinatra]

Repost your article 1000 times, Sinatra, it's still wrong. Go back to wherever you graduated and demand a refund, because you were ripped off.

Assuming you have a degree, that is.

You are making a fool of yourself, because you made an obvious error. You are incorrectly assuming that flu cases increase linearly, and comparing that projection with the total cases during a given year.

The problem with your assumption is that disease spreads exponentially. As clearly indicated in my OP, the vast majority of hospitalizations occur at the end of the flu season, not at the start.

You are looking at the seed, and comparing it to a full-grown tree. "This tree is so much larger than this seed, how could this seed ever be larger than this tree?"

This is why you need a PhD to be a epidemiologist...

Now I'm not going to personally attack you - if you wish to worry over this flu season that is your choice adn by all means to what you wish.

I am not worried in the least. I have spoken to my family physician, and two of my former university colleagues who laughed at the hype surrounding this swine flu - while then reminding me of the bird flu hype, the SARS hype, etc.

Then I ran the CDC numbers, and frankly, there is no rampaging flu. Perhaps the flu deaths will increase over the normal 30,000 - 50,000 per year average, but based on the preliminary numbers, that seems unlikely.

Perhaps the seed is the hype - and the tree is the fear induced by the hype?

No disrespect - you do what you wish.

Between the swine flu and global warming, it appears all of humankind is doomed...

 

[Sinatra]

Influenza is one of the most hypervariable viruses that we know. In any one infected patient, the influenza virus is mutating literally thousands upon thousands of times.

Most of these mutations destroy the virus, but the ones that don't, survive. If just one mutation makes the virus more pathogenic, it will be rapidly spread to other organisms (er, people), and cause more illness.

So how do viral resistances develop? Say, in a given patient, 5 out of the 1,000,000 viruses in his lungs mutate to be resistant to tamiflu. The doctors then administer tamiflu, and only the 5 mutated viruses survive. Those mutated viruses then multiply, until you have 1,000,000 tamiflu-resistant viruses.

One opportune sneeze, and those tamiflu-resistant viruses spread to others.


Now do you see why have just one million people who refuse to get vaccinated will provide a MASSIVE breeding ground for the virus to mutate? If just one person who refuses the vaccine, mutates a version of H1N1 that circumvents our vaccine, we're fucked.

The vaccine-resistant H1N1 will then go on to re-infect everyone, thus starting the deadly 1918-style waves.

Ah, but your example pertains to any flu virus.

So why the sudden alarm now? Why not before? Decades past? Decades to come?

 

[Si modo]

....


Between the swine flu and global warming, it appears all of humankind is doomed...

The difference is that the state of the science supports the conclusion that this pandemic is to be taken seriously. The state of the science in global warming does not allow for a definitive conclusion.

That rhetoric (appealing to those on the right who don't buy APG) won't fly because the two situations are not the same.

 

[Emma]

Then I ran the CDC numbers, and frankly, there is no rampaging flu. Perhaps the flu deaths will increase over the normal 30,000 - 50,000 per year average, but based on the preliminary numbers, that seems unlikely.

Look again at the charts. And look up the definition of "exponential". We've exceeded prior years' peak numbers already, and we've yet to hit the peak of this season.

 

[Sinatra]

Then I ran the CDC numbers, and frankly, there is no rampaging flu. Perhaps the flu deaths will increase over the normal 30,000 - 50,000 per year average, but based on the preliminary numbers, that seems unlikely.

Look again at the charts. And look up the definition of "exponential". We've exceeded prior years' peak numbers already, and we've yet to hit the peak of this season.

You are assuming a worst case scenario not supported by the facts...


Swine flu less deadly than seasonal flu: official

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Swine flu is killing fewer people than seasonal flu but is causing greater alarm due to its impact on children and higher healthcare costs, according to a top disease surveillance expert...

Swine flu less deadly than seasonal flu: official - Yahoo! News


Perhaps it's the minute deaths of younger people that is causing the surge in hysteria?

 

[Sinatra]

Swine flu: the real threat is panic

News flash: Swine flu is a massively overrated threat -- overrated not only in the media but by the World Health Organization, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and others who have a duty to know better.

The presidential science council warned in late August that, "in a plausible scenario," swine flu might kill 90,000 Americans with the epidemic peaking in "mid-October." But it's now obvious that this won't happen.

Total deaths since Aug. 30 from "Influenza and Pneumonia-Associated" illness are 1,397, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site FluView (cdc.gov/flu/weekly/). But only 192 of those have been laboratory-confirmed as flu of any type. (And yes, people die of pneumonia from many causes other than flu.) In fact, FluView reports that deaths from influenza and pneumonia are well within the normal bounds for this time of year -- or, as the CDC puts it, "below the epidemic threshold."

Repeat, there is no flu epidemic. There will be, but only because we have one every year.

The CDC no longer publishes specific data on swine-flu cases or deaths. But the FluTracker Web site (flu- tracker.rhizalabs.com/) does. As of last Friday, it listed 680 total US deaths compared to 644 the week before. That's just 36 deaths in a week -- or about the number the CDC estimates die every four hours of "regular" flu during the season.

FluTracker also provides a graph that shows new worldwide cases and deaths -- and that tells us deaths are occurring less often than they were a month ago. They were lower in the past week than in the previous three.

New York City data indicate that swine flu is perhaps a tenth as lethal as the seasonal variety. Plus, government Web sites from such southern hemisphere countries as Australia and New Zealand, whose flu season is now ending, show fewer flu deaths than normal.

And the Swine Flu Count Web site shows about 4,100 deaths worldwide in the last six months, fewer than die every six days from seasonal flu.


Real threat behind swine flu is the massive panic as threat is overrated

 

[eagleseven]

Ah, but your example pertains to any flu virus.

So why the sudden alarm now? Why not before? Decades past? Decades to come?

Because H1N1 has mutated to become virulent.

This is exponential growth. We are currently at the bottom-left corner of the curve, which is already as bad as last year's peak. Emma's chart is from YOUR OWN BLOODY ARTICLE!

 

[Si modo]

Then I ran the CDC numbers, and frankly, there is no rampaging flu. Perhaps the flu deaths will increase over the normal 30,000 - 50,000 per year average, but based on the preliminary numbers, that seems unlikely.

Look again at the charts. And look up the definition of "exponential". We've exceeded prior years' peak numbers already, and we've yet to hit the peak of this season.

You are assuming a worst case scenario not supported by the facts...


Swine flu less deadly than seasonal flu: official

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Swine flu is killing fewer people than seasonal flu but is causing greater alarm due to its impact on children and higher healthcare costs, according to a top disease surveillance expert...

Swine flu less deadly than seasonal flu: official - Yahoo! News


Perhaps it's the minute deaths of younger people that is causing the surge in hysteria?

You're missing her point.

All flu epidemics follow an exponential curve with respect to time.

All flus kill tens of thousands.

THIS flu already has larger number of infections and it has yet to be at the peak point in time! THIS curve is shifted up. When we hit peak, it will be uglier than any past flu.

Does that make sense?

*man, where is my whiteboard when I need it*

 

[eagleseven]

Yes, let us believe Mr. Michael Fumento, reporter for the NY Post, over the scientists of the WHO and CDC...

*facepalm*

 

[Emma]

Dear God almighty...

 

[AllieBaba]

This is a completely senseless post.

If you've been vaccinated, why are you worried about being around people who haven't been vaccinated? Either way you're safe, right?

So either you're safe from us nutters and have nothing to worry about ...or you don't believe the vaccine works.

Which one is it?

There won't be enough vaccine to vaccinate everybody before H1N1 starts to massively spread. You put us all at risk when you send your kid to school with "only the sniffles," when he may in fact be carrying H1N1, as there is a 3-day incubation period before H1N1 symptoms hit full-force.

Deniers ruin the effectiveness of mitigation efforts by ignoring recommendations and breaking quarantines.

My son and his baby are in Umatilla County, where they don't have the vaccine (I thought they hadn't received it yet..he told me they'd run out). He's sick, the baby has the sniffles and started coughing yesterday. I told him to get her to the pediatrician pronto. He lives with my sister, and they're monitoring her carefully, but as I told her, the kids who have it will be fine one day, other than a few symptoms, and can die the next, it strikes that fast. I'm not exactly sure what the dr can do other than test her if she has it, and the tests don't come back all that quickly, AND they only test once ppl are hospitalized, they aren't even testing for it at the clnics anymore. So they have no idea how widespread it is, they only know how many people are sick enough with it to be hospitalized, which personally, I think is idiotic because it gives us no indication how fatal it is. I mean, if everyone is getting it and only a handful end up in the hospital, that's one thing. If the majority of ppl who get it end up in the hospital, I think that's probably information worth having.

I hate the CDC as an organization for a variety of reasons, but this kind of stupidity is one of them. They're so fucking afraid there will be a "panic" they prefer to stay in the dark. I mean, what do they think will happen if people "panic"? Keep their kids home from school? OH MY GOD! HORRORS!

 

[Sinatra]

Look again at the charts. And look up the definition of "exponential". We've exceeded prior years' peak numbers already, and we've yet to hit the peak of this season.

You are assuming a worst case scenario not supported by the facts...


Swine flu less deadly than seasonal flu: official

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Swine flu is killing fewer people than seasonal flu but is causing greater alarm due to its impact on children and higher healthcare costs, according to a top disease surveillance expert...

Swine flu less deadly than seasonal flu: official - Yahoo! News


Perhaps it's the minute deaths of younger people that is causing the surge in hysteria?

You're missing her point.

All flu epidemics follow an exponential curve with respect to time.

All flus kill tens of thousands.

THIS flu already has larger number of infections and it has yet to be at the peak point in time! THIS curve is shifted up. When we hit peak, it will be uglier than any past flu.

Does that make sense?

*man, where is my whiteboard when I need it*

I see the point being made - but nothing is yet pointing to some widely tragic flu season vs previous flu seasons. This flu season started a bit earlier - but that could mean it also ends earlier.

This scramble to embrace worst case scenarios is a fascinating study in human behavior...

 

[eagleseven]

No flu season has been this strong, this early, in the past 9 years. That is reason enough for serious alarm.

Sinatra, you strike me as the kind of person who would refuse to leave his New Orleans' home during Hurricane Katrina.

 

[Sinatra]

No flu season has been this strong, this early, in the past 9 years. That is reason enough for serious alarm.

Sinatra, you strike me as the kind of person who would refuse to leave his New Orleans' home during Hurricane Katrina.

Hardly!

Let me share with you an article from the British Medical Journal last month...
___

Calibrated response to emerging infections
Peter Doshi, doctoral student

1 Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society, E51-070, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA


WHO has revised its definition of pandemic flu in response to current experience with A/H1N1. Peter Doshi argues that our plans for pandemics need to take into account more than the worst case scenarios

...But the 2009 pandemic, taken as a whole, bears little resemblance to the forecasted pandemic. Pandemic A/H1N1 virus is not a new subtype but the same subtype as seasonal A/H1N1 that has been circulating since 1977. Furthermore, a substantial portion of the population may have immunity. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 33% of those aged over 60 had cross reactive antibody to novel A/H1N1,5 which may explain why cases have been rare in elderly people.

There is also far less certainty today regarding the severity of the threat of pandemic flu. Experts are unsure that the 2009 pandemic—which the World Health Organization presently characterises as moderate6—will be any worse than seasonal flu.7 8 9 Since the emergence of novel A/H1N1, descriptions of pandemic flu (both its causes and its effect) have changed to such a degree that the difference between seasonal flu and pandemic flu is now unclear (table ).10 WHO, for example, for years defined pandemics as outbreaks causing "enormous numbers of deaths and illness,"10 but in early May, removed this phrase from the definition.11

Much has changed since then. When researchers at the CDC reported the first two cases of A/H1N1 swine flu on 21 April 2009 it was not the clinical illness that worried them—both patients had recovered uneventfully by the time of the report—but the fact that human to human transmission was suspected in two laboratory confirmed cases of novel influenza virus infection.20 On 26 April, with 20 cases and no deaths in the US, the Department of Health and Human Services declared a nationwide public health emergency.21 The subsequent increase in laboratory testing was unprecedented .

The sudden emphasis on laboratory testing for H1N1 in the first weeks of the outbreak, particularly in the US, produced what I call concern bias, in which concern and anxiety may drive events more than the disease itself. Concern bias confounds the interpretation of data in important ways. The rapid increase in virological testing amplified the perceived prevalence of A/H1N1 and simultaneously minimised the role other agents may have played in causing the same symptoms.

...But if this pandemic does not increase in severity, it may signal the need to reassess both the risk assessment and risk management strategies towards emerging infectious diseases. The SARS outbreak showed that large numbers of infected people are not necessary to generate concern and fear over disease. The SARS virus is known to have affected only 8096 people globally, but the fear of infection, involuntary quarantine, travel restrictions and subsequent political antagonisms, and at least $18bn in losses were felt by far more. It was not the virus but the response to it that caused these social and economic harms.

...The commonality between the SARS epidemic and the present flu pandemic (at least so far) is that both were responded to with a public health strategy that may be more suitable to an epidemic of severe disease infecting many people (type 1). But SARS (which killed around 10% of infected people) was a type 2 epidemic (infecting few, mostly severe disease), and the H1N1 pandemic may prove to be type 3 (affecting many, mostly mild). Recent historical evidence suggests that most new viruses have not constituted type 1 threats. While the 1918 pandemic surely qualifies as type 1, the 1957 and 1968 pandemics do not. Most people did not even notice the 1968 pandemic,25 and the recorded mortality in both pandemics was similar to that in contemporary non-pandemic influenza seasons.26 Despite this, pandemic preparedness strategies have largely considered only type 1 (catastrophic) epidemics. Public health responses not calibrated to the threat may be perceived as alarmist, eroding the public trust and resulting in people ignoring important warnings when serious epidemics do occur.


Calibrated response to emerging infections -- Doshi 339: b3471 -- BMJ

 

[Sinatra]

I would also urge you to review this interview from a few weeks ago with physician and epidemiologist Tom Jefferson, who closely monitored the flu season just concluded in Australia. Australians, without the benefit of vaccine, saw only 131 swine flu related deaths out of a population of 22 million people. Logic dictates the United States, now experiencing its own regular flu season, will see comparable results...

___

Why the swine flu virus is not a major threat
Posted by medconsumers on September 24, 2009

For the last 15 years, physician and epidemiologist Tom Jefferson, MD, has made it his mission to conduct extensive reviews of all studies of seasonal influenza vaccines. With colleagues at the Cochrane Collaboration, Dr. Jefferson has co-authored over 10 Cochrane reviews to answer a wide range of questions such as: do these vaccines reduce the chance of getting influenza or reduce the risk of complications, hospitalizations and deaths in elderly people, children, healthy adults and asthmatics? Based in Rome, Italy, Dr. Jefferson has published extensively and is, arguably, the world’s leading authority on the quality of the evidence supporting seasonal influenza vaccines. As we head into winter, the U.S. media is reporting a new, more ominous viral threat that may well become a pandemic. It is, of course, the swine flu, now known as the H1N1 virus or the 2009 H1N1 virus. Dr. Jefferson is interviewed by Maryann Napoli.

MN: Thanks for sending me that September 16, 2009 letter from the Health Protection Service of Australia. It made me turn my attention to that part of the world. Now that winter is ending in the southern hemisphere, what has happened in Australia doesn’t appear to be a pandemic. There were 131 H1N1 deaths out of a population of nearly 22 million people. Is it fair to conclude that the H1N1 virus did not turn out to be a pandemic in Australia?

TJ: Yes, you may conclude that the H1N1 virus is not the threat that it has been portrayed to be.

MN: And no H1N1 vaccine was available to Australians in time for their winter season.

TJ: Yes, that’s right. But notice that I did not answer the second part of your initial question about whether Australia experienced a pandemic. That’s because the definition of pandemic has changed on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) website since May 2009. The earlier version defines pandemic as: “An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness [emphasis in the original document].” In the lookalike document that currently appears on the WHO Web site, the definition of pandemic has changed to: “A disease epidemic occurs when there are more cases of that disease than normal. A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease. An influenza pandemic may occur when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity.”

MN: The phrase “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” is gone. And we now have a lower threshold for calling something a pandemic

TJ: The definition we’re left with makes the difference between seasonal influenza and pandemic influenza a matter of debate.

MN: What do you think is going on?

TJ: I am wondering if this means that the world will always be in a pandemic. The world will always have to be doubly vaccinated and the world will always be spending a huge amount of money for vaccines, and of course, buying anti-viral drugs by the barrel load. Journalists and others have contacted WHO to find out why the change in definition, and they are always told that someone will get back to them, which never happens.

MN: What about funding? The WHO funded the osteoporosis meeting in 1993 where the definition of osteoporosis was expanded. Do you know whether the same thing may have happened here?

TJ: No, I don’t, but when you look at the WHO pandemic preparedness document, which is 62 pages long, you see in the citation count only 2 references for hand washing, 3 for masks, 1 for gloves, 23 for vaccines and 18 for anti-viral drugs. What WHO should be pushing worldwide, especially for poor countries, are these public health interventions; instead, it’s pushing pharmacologic interventions. We now have clear evidence from our reviews that pharmaceutical industry-sponsored influenza vaccine studies have risen in importance and visibility, considerably more than non-pharmaceutical industry-sponsored studies. However, this is not explained either by size or quality of the studies which is the same. The likely, and very unpalatable, explanation for this finding is that the most prestigious scientific journals are more likely to print pharmaceutical industry-sponsored studies probably because of the money they make out of selling reprints of the studies and advertising space.

...MN: Yes, you made that so clear when I interviewed you in 2006 after you published an extensive report in the British Medical Journal. What about that CDC-generated statistic that the media hauls out each year to scare us into getting vaccinated: 36,000 U.S. deaths each year from influenza? It never changes.

TJ: We know that in the last 20 years in the U.S., the seasonal influenza-related mortality rate is flat, despite the fact that over the years a higher and higher number of people have been getting influenza vaccines.

MN: Re the seasonal influenza vaccine which the CDC usually recommends for certain populations like children under age two and the elderly…

TJ: There is no evidence whatsoever that seasonal influenza vaccines have any effect, especially in the elderly and young children. No evidence of reduced [number of] cases, deaths, complications.

MN: Obviously, there’s no Cochrane review on the horizon for the H1NI virus.

TJ: Of course not, there’s no data yet to review. There is no problem with the H1N1 virus. It’s no different from any other seasonal virus. In fact, it looks—from the Australian experience—like it’s going to be milder and it can be handled with public health measures, such as hand washing, masks.

Why the swine flu virus is not a major threat «