Saturday, September 19, 2009

Swine flu - are the numbers meaningless?

SHOOT: Here's a recent report, suggesting 1% of Mexicans [1 million] may be infected in the coming season, with a large number recently falling ill. Wikipedia has 100 000 more infections than the WHO, and much of Wikipdia's sources are news reports.
The last sentence - see clip below - suggests that these numbers provide a glimpse, a vague guess at the true state of affairs.
clipped from www.ptinews.com
Mexico City, Sept 19 (AFP) Mexico was hit with 1,341 new
swine flu cases since Monday, bringing the total to 26,338
ahead of the usual autumn flu season, health officials said.
The Health Ministry said one more person died from the
A(H1N1) virus between Monday and Thursday, bringing the death
toll to 218 in the country where the virus first emerged in
April before becoming a pandemic.
In late August, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova
estimated that nearly one million people could be infected by
the virus during the winter, out of a total population of 100
million in Mexico.
The global flu death toll has reached 3,486, up 281 from
a week ago, according to the World Health Organization (WHO),
which has reported 296,471 known cases of infection.
That number is seen as far below actual figures as some
countries lack systematic analysis.
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