Joseph S D Yao wrote:
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 08:29:10PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote:
According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006, and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004.
Is there a report which extrapolates the UNREPORTED cases and estimates the mortality rate from that? [And does anyone have any basis on which to make these guesses?]
Let's extrapolate from an event that I know of, and remember. In 1976, a particularly dangerous strain of flu, Victoria, was the influenza du jour. As in most strains, there were two versions: Victoria-B, where your life sucked for a few days, and then you got on with it, and Victoria-A, which was life threatening, and BTW, yet another "bird flu" entry. I'm not going to post a bunch of links, but if you want entertainment (or validation) "influenza victoria 1976" in Google will give you hours of interesting data. I had the A strain, and was gravely ill. My lungs are scarred as though I had had tuberculosis, and I'm grateful that was the only damage. In just the area I lived in, there were multiple deaths reported. The outbreaks were localized, but quite dramatic in those geographical areas where it took off. I don't mean to add to the hysteria, but I also would prefer that you not discount it. Much will depend on your local area, on whether people are tightly clustered (NYC, LA), or thinly populated (Wyoming, North Dakota). -- "You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms - you have to have the state with a monopoly on power," Condoleeza Rice, the US secretary of state, said at the end of her two-day visit to Baghdad yesterday. ...No Comment