Re: US Swine Flu Cases May Have Hit 1 Million
I work with kids professionally, so I see between 100-150 people 13-19 years old every day. Two weeks ago, about a quarter of them were hacking and coughing. In 8 years I have never seen that many kids sick in June. Now, out of a particular group of 40-50 I saw, 3 had deep, phlegmy coughs. I think that with the amount of people most of us come into contact with on any given day, it would be hard to see the numbers play out. I saw one report, I think it was New York, that was estimating that about 7% were affected with H1N1, but that means that even in a heavily hit region, you have, roughly speaking, about a 93% chance of not knowing anyone affected. The numbers here are both key and tricky. A tiny percentage of people, constituting a risk we would usually ignore, can wreak havoc if the population in big enough. If just .5% people get this disease badly enough to merit a test, it would be 1.5 million out of work, more than enough to cause an economic disturbance; however, that means 99.5% of the time, you wouldn't know anyone who was a confirmed or even probable case, so it would be really hard to see it affecting any one individual on a personal level, because the other 298.5 million who may be affected won't get tested.
As far as death and hospitalization rates go, Appleblossoms U.S. Death count thread shows that a lot of the fatal H1N1 cases are discovered posthumously.
But even if the numbers were accurate, there are plenty of reasons foe this flu to be scary. If it is only twice as deadly as seasonal flu, not only will an additional 36,000 people die beyond what we would expect normally, but those people will be young adults and children. Young adults are the people we rely on to do a large part of the vital work that keeps society running. If this group dies, orphans will be left behind, work will go undone, the burden to society would be sbstantial, and we would only be talking about a fraction of a percent of the U.S. Population. Numbers are tricky things, and we are missing a lot of info, but I think the case of Adela Chevalier illustrates and underscores a lot of our cause for alarm. Her family and the hospital laid out a clear and disturbing timline: she started showing symptoms Friday, went to the hospital Monday and died Monday night.
So my end thought here is that all of us said something truthful about the pandemic
1. Even if 10 million people have been infected and got sick, the other 290 million Americans, or roughly 97% of the country is still unaffected. The fact that H1N1 has not affected most us personally would be due to the fact that 97% of us would not be directly affected. These figures and anecdotes would then be in agreement and supporting both high numbers of estimated cases and lack of seeing H1N1 first hand. Essentially, it is totally possible you guys are all putting together the pieces of one big puzzle.
2. Even if the number of cases is ten million, there are still plenty of reasons for concern:
A. I have never heard of a healthy 20 year old dying of flu in three days.
B. A summer flu season is still more people dying.
C. The age group most affected is unusual and often tragic.
D. This is just the beginning.
Did you ever hear the story about the three blind men who feel different parts of an elephant? One feels the tail, one feels the trunk, and another the side of the elephant, and when they are asked to report what an elephant, they have wildly different answers, but they are all correct. A pandemic is such a big problem, that seeing every part personally is improbable. The cool part is that on flutrackers, we all get to put contribute our experiences together and get a better look at the phenonema.
