Well, that's the question on which all proper policy turns.
But right now, there's no answer, and there won't be one soon.
To know the death rate, you need to know the number of cases. Right now, the case definition involves confirmation at a lab in Atlanta. You can imagine how many specimens they can process in a day, or in a week. This isn't the Jack Bauer flu, where CDC can do its thing in 15 minutes.
Mexico has confirmed 26 cases. If that's true (and I'm sure it isn't) their death rate is 7/26, one of the highest ever recorded for influenza.
For the present, the mortality will appear higher than it really is.
To me, the salient fact, and what's important, is the number of confirmed deaths in the 25-45 year old age band. Compared to "other flus", these people shouldn't die at all. The fact that some have justifies some possible overreaction, at least in my mind.
The problem is, is that they're likely only testing the sickest people. There have to be tons of milder cases where people don't go for medical care so no one knows what they have.
In some of those countries, people don't go to the hospitals until they're on deaths door. They are so afraid of dying in a hospital that they wait until they are so far gone that medical intervention is useless anyway. (As told me by a friend who lived in a South America country for a while.)
If by “overreaction” you mean an overbearing immune response in those age 25-45, you might be right.
If I’ve understood correctly, during the 1918 pandemic, younger adults, with more robust immune systems, were actually more likely to die than the very young and very old because their powerful immune responses so overwhelmed and devastated their respiratory systems.
Too soon to know about the H1N1.
Indeed, it's odd. I've been hearing a number of odd things about this H1N1 virus, though I don't know for a fact whether they're true.
For instance, on Fox News today, I heard that this strain is a composite of eight "layers" — one of bird flu; three of swine flu; and the rest, "standard" human flu (i.e., the typical seasonal flu that humans ordinarily get; the human flu component helps to boost human-to-human transmissibility). So I wonder: Is this flu a "natural" occurrence, or is it a product of human design?
A reason for wondering about that: My husband told me he recalled reading an article sometime within the past few months — as he recalled, in the Washington Post or Washington Times (???), but he doesn't specifically remember — that reported certain biotoxins "went missing" from the Army's biological weapons research lab at Fort Dietrich, Maryland sometime earlier this year or late last year. To the best of his recollection, H1N1 was one of the missing agents.
So hubby tried to retrieve the article yesterday, but it seems it has "gone missing," too.
Anyhoot, I don't know whether this information is correct. But it seems clear there's a lot that's "unusual" about this flu strain, in particular something that you noted, Jim Noble: That the anticipated most impacted population is not the very young or the very old (as is typical with a "normal" human flu), but people in the middle decades of life — the 25–45 band.
Though this might be nothing but "tin-foil hat" material, it raises interesting questions.
Can anyone out there reading this provide further information?