Wednesday, May 20, 2009

whatever happened to the hysteria over H5N1?

In case you are still psyched out about the flu, here's a pretty cool resource from the CDC to put things into (a little bit of a) perspective: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/update.htm.

I would really rather see the table also include numbers for the confirmed cases of other types of flu (e.g. H5N1), and the deaths from those. But, given that the general public doesn't realize that something like 36,000 people die each year from "traditional" influenza infections in the US alone, it might cause more panic than it should - information overload and whatnot.

2 comments:

GeorgeRN said...

WHO and CDC are still tracking H5N1. We just don't see it because the news organizations have ADD. A real concern is a co-infection with H5N1 and H1N1. Egypt seems to be getting hit by H5N1.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LK285452.htm

mathbionerd said...

Wow, that article is pretty cool, and just a reminder of how quickly viruses evolve