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I don't really know where to start with this but I'll raise a few points.
It's too early to calculate mortality or morbidity rates. Professionals in the field almost unanimously agree on this.
Pandemics happen in waves. This is still wave one. Second waves tend to be the problematic time. Most serious pandemics are benign in wave one.
Swine Flu was less serious than normal flu but still killed half a million people globally. I don't get why people think half a million extra deaths is not a big deal. Half a million human deaths FFS!
Spanish flu on the other hand had a mortality rate of about 2.5% and ended up killing 50 million.
Nobody knows how good or bad things are. It is not possible to know at the moment.
Stonehedge-
Nobody knows how good or bad things are. It is not possible to know at the moment.
That's exactly my point. Right now, we don't have any final statistics about it, however what we do know so far - according to virologists - does not make it sound like it'll end the human race.
I don't get why people think half a million extra deaths is not a big deal.
I don't think anyone is arguing that it's "not a big deal" as such. Just that there is maybe no reason to report about it on the level it is being reported on. Because again, many thousand people can die in a bad flu year in the UK alone and yet we don't see constant frontpage headlines about it. And that's not comparing apples to oranges - it's very directly comparing apples to apples. It just seems very disproportionate, and there are way too many people just staring at the "x people dead" number and freaking out about it.
I think the medical etc. professionals know what they have to do and I trust them to respond to the threat as required. For us 'normal people' in London (or generally in Europe) currently there is nothing we can do, or do differently. I don't like the undertone of "Don't panic, but we'll make sure to report about it in a way that makes it seem like maybe you should panic anyway" in some of the media.
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Swine Flu was less serious than normal flu but still killed half a
million people globally. I don't get why people think half a million
extra deaths is not a big deal. Half a million human deaths FFS!is it extra deaths, or half a million that would have died from the 'normal' flu anyway?
is there a trend when this sort of new flu comes out, that less people die of the normal flu, because this other one gets them first?
SwissChap
n3il
Really? In bad years, apparently up to 10000 people die from the flu, or flu complications. Just in the UK.