The Gap Between Stats and Understanding In Flu Cases

KentuckyFC writes "Bird flu gets all the headlines but ordinary flu kills several orders of magnitude more people each year and represents a significant threat to our society. The frightening thing about ordinary flu is how little we understand about how it spreads. According to a report at the physics arXiv blog, researchers trying to model this process say they still don't know some basic probabilities associated with infection (pdf, abstract). For instance, given that the disease has manifested itself clinically in an individual, what are the chances of that person dying? And if a virus can be caught from a number of different host species (as it might eventually be with bird flu) what is the probability of transmission?"

Comments

Re:how about doing what nature intended instead

[theshowmecanuck]

In one sense I totally agree with you. We need to exercise our "natural" immune system in order for it to become stronger. On the other hand, part of human evolutionary adaptation gave us the ability to modify our situation/environment.

With respect to the bird flu (being mentioned a lot in the replies), one of the best observations I have heard is that the real bird flu threat is the one you contract from KFC and McDonalds Chicken Nuggets, et al. Heart disease and obesity. That probably kills far more than all influenzas and pneumonias in the U.S. and Canada each year. :) A lot of people will need to become immune to all the advertising for that epidemic to die down.