This is all speculation, but I wonder what people think of it. First I keep reading that 20,000 Americans die of flu every year (yes, mostly during the winter). Out of how many cases? Clearly millions, so let us guess 20 million. I could probably find it somewhere, but the details are not important. So there is one chance in a thousand of dying from it.
Now 100+ Mexicans have died out of 1600 confirmed cases. My WAG is that the average Mexican peasant or worker hardly ever sees a doctor, even if he has the flu. Those 1600 confirmed cases could easily hide 100,000 cases or even more. Only the most serious would get to the hospital and only the most serious of them would die.
One more point is that the Americans and Canadians who have been confirmed have had relatively minor cases. Flu is never pleasant, but rather rarely that serious either. So I have no reason, so far at least, to think that this is anything more than an out-of-season flu epidemic. I am certainly not about to panic.
I gotta take issue with this - Mexico has free healthcare doesn’t it? I think they’d be more likely to see the doc than your average uninsured American. No clue on the actual data though.
That said, I agree with you in principle that this flu is probably widespread in Mexico and has a low mortality rate since they were only surveilling for serious illness (i.e. hospitalized patients). In the U.S. the surveillance that picked it up was outpatients.
On the other hand, I’ve heard some epidemiologists point out that this thing will probably go away over the next couple of weeks because of the seasonal nature of flu transmission and reappear in the Fall. At which point there’s a chance that a more virulent strain is going to pop up - for reasons I don’t understand 2nd waves tend to be worse than the first wave.
Basically this thing is a totally new flu. Flu’s change quickly, they combine with other strains, they mutate, they can be very very bad, they can spread very very quickly, there’s no reason to expect there’s much resistance to this thing in the population, and nobody knows how bad it is now or how bad it will get over time. I’m not too worried atm. But on the other hand I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets worse later.
I think I’m jaded…but I more than half believe the only reason this is getting so much press is that it conveniently draws attention away from the rocky economy yet allows politicos to have a fresh round of pointing fingers at others across the aisle for “letting this happen” and claim that their side is/will do more to solve this new “crisis.” They don’t believe it’s a real threat, but it builds capital for the 2010 elections.
Hari Seldon, your thread earlier today was identical and was closed. Again, post to one of the many existing swine flu threads.
Do not recreate this thread.