Is the Swine Flu Really News?
in 2008, the world death rate was 8.23 deaths per 1,000 population. (1)Wikipedia quotes the US Census Bureau estimate of world population to be 6.77 billion as of 10 July 2009.(2)
Total Death rate
8.23 deaths per 1,000 population in 6.77 billion people means:
Approximately 55.7 million deaths per year
Approximately 153,000 deaths per day
Approximately 6360 deaths per hour
Approximately 106 deaths per minute
Approximately 1.77 deaths per second.
(Almost 2 deaths per second)
Influenza Death rate
According to WHO(3),
"In annual influenza epidemics 5-15% of the population are affected with upper respiratory tract infections. Hospitalization and deaths mainly occur in high-risk groups (elderly, chronically ill). Although difficult to assess, these annual epidemics are thought to result in between three and five million cases of severe illness and between 250 000 and 500 000 deaths every year around the world. Most deaths currently associated with influenza in industrialized countries occur among the elderly over 65 years of age."It should be noted that in the USA, the above 5-15% includes Influenza Like Illness (ILI). Clinically confirmed influenza cases are only 10-15 percent of the total ILI cases.
500,000/365 = 1370 deaths from influenza per day based on WHO figures. 1370/24 = 57 deaths from influenza per hour 57/60 = one death from influenza every 63 seconds on average. If we use the figure of 250,000 deaths per year from influenza related causes, the average becomes 1 death every 2 minutes and 6 seconds from influenza.According to WHO(4), as of June 19, 2009 the worldwide total for H1N1 (swine flu) associated deaths was 180.
In other words, over several months of time, the number of alleged deaths from "swine flu" have totaled the number that normally die in a slow year of regular influenza in 6 hours and 18 minutes.
1. http://www.indexmundi.com/world/death_rate.html
Source: CIA World Factbook - Unless otherwise noted, information in this page is accurate as of December 18, 2008
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
3. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/2003/fs211/en/
4. http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_06_19/en/index.html
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