sportage: How many people suffer from 'basic every day' flu each year, compared to swine flu, 100x, 1000x, 10000x? The problem with swine flu is that we do not know how dangerous it is, and that's the most worrying factor. But, current indicators do point to it being a mild flu, and not with mortality rates into the 1-5% levels which most people were worried about, so that's good news.
Remember, you can have a pandemic and still have no one dying if the mortality rate is 0%. The unknown factor at the time was whether it was 0.1% or 1-5%, which makes a heck lot of a difference to number of deaths due to swine flu.
Or let me put in the reverse scenario: Suppose we do get news of the swine flu, but authorities and news media outlets simply downplay it, and people go on with life as usual, with the usual habits that tend to help spread an infectious disease easily. Assume that the swine flu is the real dreaded flu we were all worried about, with mortality rates of 5-8% (around the levels of that oft-quoted Spanish flu), and pretty transmissible (which swine flu is proving to be). Wouldn't that then mean that the resulting lack of awareness, and people simply not giving a toss in the initial stages, when the virus was still able to be contained due to the low number of hosts/vectors, be a big opportunity missed, and the resulting pandemic, combined with the relatively high hypothetical mortality rates, lead to thousands, or even millions of deaths worldwide, because no one cared in the first place when it was (relatively) containable? Or even if the spread could not be controlled, would the resulting panic, and much heightened awareness in the public slow the spread of the flu drastically enough to allow scientists to work to develop a vaccine (they usually take a few months for flu) which can potentially save lives, who might have died if the 'panic' did not occur and the virus became widespread among the population?
They're of course not easy choices, and when it comes to being a policy maker with these kinds of decisions: You never win, because if you're right, you'll be asked why you didn't ring the alarm bells earlier when it was still containable, leading to so many deaths, and if you're wrong, you'll be asked why you predicted wrongly, and led to so much disruption of people's lives.
Remember, you can have a pandemic and still have no one dying if the mortality rate is 0%. The unknown factor at the time was whether it was 0.1% or 1-5%, which makes a heck lot of a difference to number of deaths due to swine flu.
Or let me put in the reverse scenario: Suppose we do get news of the swine flu, but authorities and news media outlets simply downplay it, and people go on with life as usual, with the usual habits that tend to help spread an infectious disease easily. Assume that the swine flu is the real dreaded flu we were all worried about, with mortality rates of 5-8% (around the levels of that oft-quoted Spanish flu), and pretty transmissible (which swine flu is proving to be). Wouldn't that then mean that the resulting lack of awareness, and people simply not giving a toss in the initial stages, when the virus was still able to be contained due to the low number of hosts/vectors, be a big opportunity missed, and the resulting pandemic, combined with the relatively high hypothetical mortality rates, lead to thousands, or even millions of deaths worldwide, because no one cared in the first place when it was (relatively) containable? Or even if the spread could not be controlled, would the resulting panic, and much heightened awareness in the public slow the spread of the flu drastically enough to allow scientists to work to develop a vaccine (they usually take a few months for flu) which can potentially save lives, who might have died if the 'panic' did not occur and the virus became widespread among the population?
They're of course not easy choices, and when it comes to being a policy maker with these kinds of decisions: You never win, because if you're right, you'll be asked why you didn't ring the alarm bells earlier when it was still containable, leading to so many deaths, and if you're wrong, you'll be asked why you predicted wrongly, and led to so much disruption of people's lives.
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