A Few Uneducated Thoughts on Swine Flu
By Daniel Miessler on April 26th, 2009: Tagged as Health
If this flu was completely different, and more deadly, it could kill billions of people! — Fearmonger
It’s probably not nearly as bad as you’re hearing; here’s why:
- Flu kills people every year: more some years, less other years.
- The numbers that die each year are generally much higher than people think.
- For example, if people were to be told that flu this year would kill the average number of people it kills every year (around 36,000)1, people would basically panic. They’d stop going outside and ask to stay home from work.
- Nobody asks the simple question: how different are these numbers? How many people are dying from this in first-world countries?
- All they hear is “60 people died”, and they want to panic–ignoring the fact that 60 people have probably died from barbeque and carpet accidents in the same amount of time.
Look, people dying of flu in Mexico is not really that scary to me; it’s kind of like people in Africa dying of any number of easily treatable diseases. Healthcare quality matters, a lot. So when people start dying en masse in the United States I’ll happily look stupid.
Until then this is a third world problem that will do little more in this country than give the sensationalist media a welcomed ratings boost. And that sickens me. ::
[ 2009-04-26 : EDIT: Tightening and cleanup. ]