Gripe A - the flu

[EvergreenGal]

The media is a double edged sword for sure...and here it seems to be pushed into more extremes!

Common sense prevails in all of this....let's just take a deep breath and get out of our own way!

Wash your hands after being out and about and take a travel size hand sanitizer with you. Cover your mouth if you cough or sneeze....or better yet cough or sneeze into your forearm....and if this thing gets worse try and stay away from over crowded areas....

 

[John.St]

Exactly.

Do remember to wash your finger tips carefully - under our nails we have a first rate deposit for germs (hospital & doctors' general advice).

 

[RWS]

. . . . death toll after 5 or 6 years below 6,000 (six thousand) - or about 1/30 of the number of homicides in the US alone . . . .

Goodness, homicides in the United States total nothing like 180,000! Fewer than six thousand deaths would be around a third of the annual total of homicides in the States: the murder rate is about 5 or 6 per hundred thousand inhabitants, probably roughly the same as in Argentina (far below the rates in northwestern Europe, I know, but we've rather more . . . hmm . . . demographic challenges in the U.S.).

 

[John.St]

Goodness, homicides in the United States total nothing like 180,000! Fewer than six thousand deaths would be around a third of the annual total of homicides in the States: the murder rate is about 5 or 6 per hundred thousand inhabitants

Last figure I saw (7-8-9 years ago) was some 30,000 a year in the US.

Even 5,5 per hundred thousand makes 5,5 / 100,000 * 300,000,000 = 16,500 a year.

Multiply by the 5-6 years since 2003 and you get some 91,000 homicides.

The average 1970 to 1995 was 8.5 / 100,000.

Take a look at this http://polyticks.com/polyticks/beararms/liars/uscentury.gif

there obviously has been a severe drop in the homicide rate lately.

 

[RWS]

. . . . Multiply by the 5-6 years since 2003 . . . .

Ah, forgive me! Your command of English is much better than I'd given you credit for: when you indicated that you were using a multi-year figure, I simply (and wrongly) assumed that you had actually meant to indicate an annual rate.

Quite true, the most annual recent rate of 5.8/100,000 yields about 17,600 or a bit more. Multiplied by 6, the result of 105,600 is about seventeen or eighteen times the 6,000 you gave as an upper limit for bird-flu deaths: at seventeen or eighteen times, rather closer to the thirty-fold difference than the three-fold I'd mistakenly inferred.

As an American with relatives in Denmark, I should have known that a Danish poster would not have made such an error as I'd inferred.

 

[John.St]

Ah, forgive me! ...

You are forgiven - why, I may even allow you to kiss my big toe

The shocking figure I recalled from around 1990 actually was 10,5/100,000 - re. the link - yielding some 31,500/year and thus 173,000 in 5½ year.

 

[simonmigdal]

Probably was leaked by the drug cartel of mexico to the media to take the heat off themm and then the farmaceutical companies are making a killing worlwide..its just one big hype..

Dr Simon Migdal....expat

 

[simonmigdal]

Probably was leaked by the drug cartel of mexico to the media to take the heat off them and then the farmaceutical companies are making a killing worlwide..its just one big hype..

Dr Simon Migdal....expat from london

 

[simonmigdal]

set by drug cartel to take heat off them and then the farmaceutical companies jumprd in.

expat pat from london...Dr Simon Migdal

 

[katti]

"This is just a minor flu" said a French doctor.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/sante/2009/0...a-reste-une-grippette-assure-le-pr-debre-.php

Of course the minister of health said the same day that this doctor is wrong and minimalising the problem but who cares : I just wanted to post something positive about this flu, instead of causing all the panic