Posts Tagged ‘swine flu’
Do the Swine Flu numbers stack up to a worldwide pandemic?
6 May 2009 — As of 06:00 GMT, 6 May 2009, 22 countries have officially reported 1516 cases of influenza A (H1N1) infection.
As of May 2009, the Earth’s population is estimated to be about 6.77 billion.
During the last officially-declared flu epidemic in the UK, in 1989, 29,000 flu-related deaths were reported.
At its peak, there were 534 recorded cases in every 100,000 – well above the 400 threshold which defines an epidemic.
These numbers are for the UK only.
So, is this current outbreak really that serious?
I’m not a medical person but the numbers don’t stack up.
Putting on the conspiracy theory hat here, is this an opportunity grabbed with both hands by world governments to take our collective minds off the global economic meltdown?
We may not have any money but thank god and the national health services of the world, we’re still alive.
TweetThat’s it, we’re all going to die.
It’s a fact of life in this connected world that there is just too much news.
That statement isn’t actually 100% correct. There is in truth too much space for news and not enough real news to fill the space.
Plus bad news and overblown crises sell newspapers and attract viewers to the TV news channels. So the news outlets milk a crises for all it’s worth.
News organisations fuel the public fascination with doom. HIV and Aids, SARS, Bird Flu and now Swine Flu, or more correctly H1N1, fill the column inches and give overpaid news anchors something to talk about. The same can be said for the occasional terrorist outrage that is almost certainly the beginning of the end of the world as we know it.
Unlike 20 – 30 years ago when news came to you in the morning newspaper and the 6pm TV news, we now have almost instant 24 hour news. As it happens so we see, hear and read about it. But in reality there isn’t enough stuff to fill the news hole. So it gets regurgitated, re-hashed, new slants get added, experts crawl out of the woodwork and get wheeled in front of the cameras to pontificate on the forthcoming apocalypse.
The public watches while the news feeds our fears and dreads.
Sometimes there is just too much information.
TweetUK homes to get swine flu advice
BBC NEWS | UK | UK homes to get swine flu advice:
“
Leaflets about the swine flu outbreak and how to prevent its spread are to be delivered to every UK household.
The Department of Health is also urgently looking at increasing stockpiles of facemasks, most likely for issue to health professionals.
The results of swine flu tests on 23 people in Scotland are expected later. A Falkirk couple, who recently returned from Mexico, are the UK’s first cases.”
Oh great, more junk mail.
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