Monday, July 20, 2009

Have some perspective

According to a Swedish Government institution with a very short name: The Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (SMI), somewhere between 200 and 4000 people die from influenza each year with between 2-20% of the population getting infected. A normal year Sweden faces about 1500 dead and about 10% infected. This means around 4 people dies every day from flu in my birth nation. This, however, is not really true since there is months were the flu strikes much harder so the number of dead/day during certain months is higher. According to those that supposedly know things about influenza this is what makes this swiney flue more dangerous because it has infected soooooo many during these summer months. Not that people don’t get flu during summer months, it has happen before and will happen again, but apparently this Hog Flu has something special about it. I have not figured out what yet, and so hasn’t anyone else, including WHO and our bellowed journalists, but there is still something, isn’t it?

That the gossip press with their brain-dead journalists now focus on some poor smuck in critical condition that may perhaps die should be checked against these facts and many more that has been mentioned by those that actually use rational thinking. No one is saying that this cannot become dangerous in the future, it is highly unlikely, but it can. What people should realize is that right now there is nothing special about this situation. Although it is sad hearing about some guy lying at the hospital and people here and there dies nothing is out of the ordinary despite what some representatives of our enemies would have you believe. In fact, even if the decease spreads faster and infect hundreds of thousands in Sweden (tens of millions worldwide) the death rate is so low there is hardly any reason for concern.

Let’s calculate the worst case scenario now shall we:

The death rate is today about 0,14% (and falling) in developed nations. Lets say 500 000 Swedes get infected as some news scare us might happen. This means that 7000 people might die. If we add the normal count of 1500 to this (which we really shouldn’t do) we get 8500 people or about the same amount of people that dies from tobacco related cases each year. And this is the worst case scenario! Ohhh… I’m so scared... Of course the media will never mention these facts and I predict they instead will blow up the numbers and/or mention the overall number for all nations because that is much scarier. Hearing 8500 might die isn’t so scary, but hearing that a couple of hundreds of thousands might die is a bit scary. So when people stop caring, again, about this Piggy Flu, this is what journalists will sell you next, in part they are already doing it.

Please people, have some perspective even if journalists don’t.

2 comments:

  1. Sure, the media has a strong tendency to blow things out of proportion. Although the flu of strain A and subtype H1N1 is still very interesting in my opinion. Not only because it could have a tendency to strike harder against young, healthy people in difference to the yearly influenzas that usually wipe out old people, but also because of the "little outbreak" in 1918. If you're not already familiar with it, you might wanna google for the spanish flu.

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  2. H1N1 always strike harder against the young compares to other strains. You might wanna check out my post a bit further down if you wanna read about that and the Spanish flu. In other words, nothing new under the sun.

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