Saturday, May 23, 2009

Swine Flu Will Likely Sicken Billions But Kill at a Low Rate | 80beats | Discover Magazine

I am tired of the occasional news article about ____ more people infected with swine flu, __ more died, etc. etc. The figures are really meaningless without being compared to the stats of seasonal flu and it creates unnecessary panic. So I've done my own research and here's an article with all the stats.

Swine Flu Will Likely Sicken Billions But Kill at a Low Rate | 80beats | Discover Magazine

For those of you who are lazy about reading like me, here's the summary:-

Mortality rate of seasonal flu: 0.1% (1 in 1000 - kills 250,000 annually)
Mortality rate of swine flu: 0.4% (4 in 1000)

Total confirmed infection of swine flu: 4,694
Total died: 61 (56 in Mexico)

This is probably a little more disturbing:-

That makes the swine flu virus about as dangerous as the virus behind a 1957 pandemic that killed 2 million people worldwide. But it’s not nearly as lethal as the bug that caused the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

And for those who likes to panic, please take into consideration our technological/medial advancements since 1957.

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