Highly contagious swine flu could kill 14 million; slice 2% off world GDP

Bloomberg: Scientists are trying to determine whether swine flu will mutate and become more deadly as it spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and back. The virus is more contagious than seasonal flu, the Geneva-based WHO said today in a statement on its Web site. A “moderate” pandemic like the 1957 Asian flu could kill 14.2 million people and shave 2 percent from the global economy in the first year, the World Bank said in October.
In seasonal flu, each person who comes in contact with someone who’s sick has a 5 percent to 15 percent probability of illness, according to a statement posted today on the WHO’s Web site. In swine flu, the probability increased to 22 percent to 33 percent, WHO said.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com May 11 (Bloomberg) -- The swine flu strain that has sickened people in 30 countries rivals the severity of the 1957 “Asian flu” pandemic that was as much as four times deadlier than typical seasonal flu, scientists said. About four of 1,000 people infected with the new H1N1 strain in Mexico by late April died, according to a study published today in the journal Science that was led by Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College London. The 1957 pandemic killed about 2 million people, while seasonal flu epidemics cause 250,000 to 500,000 deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization.