[LINK] Extract of comp.risks item: CNN article on "normal flu" mortalities (from J. Epstein)

[Roger Clarke]

At 0:08 +1000 1/5/09, Phillip Musumeci wrote:
>>  Regular flu has killed thousands since January

Has anyone got any measures of deaths per day / week / year from:
-   cholera
-   malaria
-   other 'third world' diseases

And what about deaths from golden staph and clinical error, in 
'advanced world' hospitals?

I support care being taken in relation to contagious diseases.

But I have real doubts about the usefulness of a heat-sensor pointed 
at people's faces.


Scott Howard <scott at doc.net.au>>
>The 1918 "Spanish" flu, which was another strain of Influenza A H1N1,
>killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people worldwide, with a mortality
>rate of somewhere between 2.5% and 5%.

An authoritative-sounding chap on the radio this morning said between 
1% and 2% of those infected.  What I didn't get from the interview 
was any estimates of the proportion of populations that caught it.

Do we have any feel for the contagiousness of the disease?

It must be very difficult to come up with confident epidemiological 
analyses, and hard information about vectors, in such a short time.

And how confident can people be in the attribution of the Mexican 
body-count to this particular virus?  Surely they haven't done 
reliable path lab testing on all 200 or so yet.  Can it be that a 
substantial proportion of those deaths are from other causes?


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW