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WHO Says Swine Flu May Have Peaked In the US
Hugh Pickens writes "The World Health Organization says that there were 'early signs of a peak' in swine flu activity in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including the US. The American College Health Association, which surveys more than 250 colleges with more than three million students, said new flu cases had dropped 27 percent in the week ending on November 13th from the week before, the first drop since school resumed in the fall. Nonetheless, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of vaccination and respiratory disease at the CDC, chose her words carefully. 'We are in better shape today than we were a couple of weeks ago,' she says. 'I wish I knew if we had hit the peak. Even if a peak has occurred, half the people who are going to get sick haven't gotten sick yet.' Privately, federal health officials say they fear that if they concede the flu has peaked, Americans will become complacent and lose interest in getting vaccinated, increasing the chances of another wave. However, Dr. Lone Simonsen, a former CDC epidemiologist, says she expects a third wave in December or January, possibly beginning in the South again. Based on death rates in New York City and in Scandinavia, Simonsen argues that both 1918 and 1957 had mild spring waves followed by two stronger waves, one in fall and one in midwinter, adding that in the pandemic of 1889, the bulk of the deaths occurred in the third wave. 'If people think it's going away, they can think again.'"
Who says it? Well, it wasn't me.
Isn't the peak something that you talk about later when you are analyzing the data? Of what relevance is it to discuss a peak in this current cycle?
Here in Canada, my doctor said yesterday that he is seeing a drop in people coming in with flu symptoms. It used to be more in the past few weeks.
Also, Google Flu Trends shows a marked drop. In the USA, there is a drop too.
I have also observed less absence at my little kid's school as well.
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Because the lost productivity from having massive amounts of the workforce absent due to illness, never mind the costs of delays and other problems would cost us more than one billion.
(Swine Flu) A virus that was super-contagious and infected nearly everyone, and got them sick for 2 weeks, but barely anyone would die from would be far more economically damaging than a virus that was not very contagious, but killed all those it infected. (HIV)
This is because our economy was never meant to handle a mass exodus of workers. We're lucky it wasn't worse than it was. In places in Michigan, 1/2 of entire counties got sick, and schools and businesses were closed for days.
Just because You didn't get sick doesn't mean the illness is trivial.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
It tells you for how long the swine flu excuse will work.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
They did horrible things, e.g. killing the electric car, Sgt Pepper, ...
the reason for concern is legitimate, albeit possibly overtcautipus. Two traits make this flu serious. One is the observation that a higher percentage of deaths are occuring in young people and two is that, being a strain with genes that have recently jumped from swine and possibly birds makes it less stable.
Where else? Pandemistan.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.