I've thought all along that this wasn't something to be trifled with or mocked, in any way. It's certainly deadly serious business, and possible very deadly serious business. Just think what the pandemonium will be if the strain mutates and becomes just incrementally more lethal - say a fatality rate at 1.8% to 2.2%. It would be a disaster.
IMHO, the real danger is not mortality, but the morbidity. In our sustems based society, what happens if %25 of the population is ill leading to an abseenteeism rate of ~ 40% (sick + those staying home to take care of the sick kids & spouses + the worried well).
Supermarkets have about 18 hours of food for normal demand, gas stations have ~ 2 days of supply. Everything from ATMs to downed powerlines need a human in the loop and we currently run at 99% capacity in most systems as there is no profit on redundancy and slack.
In Colorado, we had a small dress rehearsal a couple of years ago when we had back to back weekend blizzards. Food stores had great difficulty re-stocking. As an indicator of the inconnectivity, there were new stories about travelers stranded at Heathrow when Denver shut down.
My favorite failed system thought? The Methamphetamine distribution “system”. Oh yeah, note to self: Buy more 00 Buck...
BS, it is another phony crisis. Believe it if you want, I don’t and the end of the flu season this year will bear out my beliefs. Ya’ll better learn fast that every thing that can be made into a crisis for taking your money and freedom will be done, including this phony a**ed flu epidemic and the phony death rate.
It certainly is. There is a common and false belief floating around that past performance is a guarantee of future results. 1970s Swine flu turned out to be nothing, H5N1 didn't hit, SARS was contained so we are safe.
Absurd. The threat is always there. Infuenza A is a mutation machine. The genetic tumblers stop in the right position and we are right where we were in 1918.
PLoS has another contribution today:
First estimation of direct H1N1pdm virulenceFrom reported non consolidated data from Mauritius and New Caledonia
We provide rough estimates of direct lethality from ARDS due to H1N1pdm from two independent sources of data, one from New Caledonia where 30,000 infections are assumed to have occured and 3 deaths reported to be attributable directly to the pandemic virus.
Another source is Mauritius where 70,000 infections are estimated to have occured, and 7 reported death from ARDS (5 of them are currently confirmed).
These surveillance data allows for first estimation of direct lethality due to H1N1pdm to be 1 per 10,000 infections, about 100 times more than regular seasonal influenza.