Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

[sharon sanders]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

Swine Flu Deaths Take 90% of Toll Among Young People (Update3)


By Pat Wechsler and Tom Randall
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Almost 90 percent of 292 deaths related to swine flu in the U.S. since Sept. 1 were in people younger than age 65, contrary to the pattern for seasonal flu, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
In a typical season, the majority of deaths are among people older than 80, Anne Schuchat, head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Atlanta-based CDC, said today in a conference call.
Almost 5,000 people in 27 states covered by the report have been hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed H1N1 influenza since Sept. 1, and more than 53 percent are younger than 25, Schuchat said.
?This is a young person?s disease,? Schuchat said. The number of deaths among younger Americans ?is really, really different from what happens with the seasonal flu. It is tragic for the family and hard for us in public health to see.?......

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a6hqMT775kY8

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

From Ireland;

http://www.hpsc.ie/hpsc/A-Z/EmergencyPlanning/AvianPandemicInfluenza/SwineInfluenza/Surveillance%20Reports/File,3749,en.pdf

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

Missouriwatcher.
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/Vaccines/recs/aci...-2-flu-vac.pdf

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

http://mohfw-h1n1.nic.in/Epidemiological.html

[Rick]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

Strangely, when you look at the % of ILI sorted by age group, from the ever changing (retroactively) CDC data, the % is constant, except for the 0-4 and 5-24 year old age groups. What's more, it predicts new waves by about a week earlier than the CDC and Google Flu Trends...


Public domain, if you can make a buck off it, give some to the poor.

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

Thanks, Rick and welcome! I don't think that the CDC is puposely trying to upset you.
"All data are preliminary and may change as more reports are received."

That 5-24 group certainly seems to be the leading intensity indicator. School kids, college kids. Large numbers in small spaces.

[Rick]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

Hi RoRo,

Well, my experience in business is that if it's uncertain whether it's incompetence or evil intent, it always turns out to be incompetence.

But in the case of the CDC, after following this for months, I'm convinced it's both. The data is deliberately obscured and made difficult to access. For instance, as the Fall Wave started to ramp up, they had this amateurish graph any 10 year old kid these days could do a better job of, but at least not deliberatelly deceptive...

Then, realizing it really looks bad to ramp up like that compared to previous years, the next week they come out with this dead fish...

As an expert on such things, it's deliberately designed in all ways to be deceptive. You can no longer compare it to previous years, it's no longer obvious that something unusual is going on. Plus, the horizontal scale is so compressed with the dates slanted, that it can't be read. And the icing on the cake, even though the original was done by someone that seems incapable of using modern software like Excel, it is also deliberately distorted. A crappy Gif like that will never be clear, but you have to go to extra steps to make it that much worse than the original. Compare the vertical scales, for instance. And the horizontal scale has gone through an extra step of distortion.

I'd bet the ranch the person producing it was told to hide the fact it was ramping up, to prevent panic etc., and followed orders every way they could think of with their limited knowledge of the subject.

[Rick]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

The "% Between 5 and 24" Model doesn't just predict Waves a week before everything else, it give us a measure of what percentage of ILI is from a Wave/Pandemic Wave.

What it's saying, is that the Fall Wave has ended, with a low level of the 2009 Pandemic still out there. It's not just the ILI background noise. Google Flu Trends will tick up, particularly during the week as it flops up and down. And it looks like the algorithm accents change to try to win the prediction race with the CDC. Over a dozen states were up last week, in the US, as the curve started to bottom out, but now 100% are down. Google would have told you last week that it was going back up, while the "% Between 5 and 24" Model strongly predicted otherwise.


Public domain, if you can make a buck off it, give some to the poor.

[estacion]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

From Spain.
Acumulated sentinel cases from #20 week to #48 week:

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

Most recent data on fatalities from India indicating a slight shift towards the 40-60 age group.
Age Distribution:
0-9: 57 (10.9%)
10-19:36 (6.9%)
20-29:155 (29.5%)
30-39:117 (22.3%)
40-49:90 (17.1%)
50-59:47 (9.0%)
60-69:20 (3.8%)
70-79:3 (0.6%)
Unk: 183
(Average: 31.2; Median: 30; Range 1 month to 71 years).

compared to Nov 28th
Age Distribution:
0-9: 51 (11.0%)
10-19:32 (6.9%)
20-29:143 (30.8%)
30-39:105 (22.6%)
40-49:75 (16.2%)
50-59:36 (7.8%)
60-69:19 (4.1%)
70-79:3 (0.7%)
Unk: 113
(Average: 30.9; Median: 30; Range 1 month to 71 years).

[Missouriwatcher]

Re: Tracking the World Wide Age Distribution of Swine Flu

Canada has some good stats:

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/fluwatch/09-10/w48_09/index-eng.php