H1N1 Is Everywhere! A Collection of Statistics

I can't get away from this topic! It was a discussion on a school's yahoo group. I received an email today from a parent at Will's school. I heard that someone who's kids have already recovered from the school is going to vaccinate them anyway. (Not everyone understands that having an disease and recovering means that your body has already produced the antibodies necessary to fight off the same disease.)

I'll start off by saying that no one knows how dangerous the swine flu will be this season. (I'll be able to say how bad it was around next April with a lot of accuracy -- but that doesn't help now.)

A pandemic, while a very scary word, merely means worldwide. Thus I say with accuracy, chicken pox is a pandemic.

Here is preliminary data from the CDC 2009-2010 Influenza Season Week 40 ending October 10, 2009.

*There were: Eleven influenza-associated pediatric deaths reported. Ten of these deaths were associated with 2009 influenza A (H1N1) virus infection and one was associated with an influenza A virus, for which subtype is undetermined.

*Cumulatively since August 30th there have been 43 pediatric deaths nationwide.

*From August 30 – October 10, 2009, 4,958 laboratory-confirmed influenza associated hospitalizations, 292 laboratory-confirmed influenza associated deaths, 15,696 pneumonia and influenza syndrome-based hospitalizations, and 2,029 pneumonia and influenza syndrome-based deaths, were reported to CDC. (This includes all influenza strains not just H1N1.)

2009 H1N1 Flu: Situation Update

*Since April 2009, there have been 86 confirmed pediatric 2009 H1N1 deaths; 39 of these have been reported to CDC since August 30, 2009.

*Almost all of the influenza viruses identified so far are 2009 H1N1 influenza A viruses. These viruses remain similar to the virus chosen for the 2009 H1N1 vaccine ...

World Health Organization Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 - update 70 Other Updates
*As of 11 October 2009, worldwide there have been more than 399232 laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009 and over 4735 deaths reported to WHO. As many countries have stopped counting individual cases, particularly of milder illness, the case count is significantly lower than the actually number of cases that have occurred. WHO is actively monitoring the progress of the pandemic through frequent consultations with the WHO Regional Offices and member states and through monitoring of multiple sources of data.

* U S population over 304,059,724 (July 2008)

* World Population 6,706,993,152 (estimated July 2008)

*World Health Organizations Weekly Epidemiological Record on Pandemic H1N1 2009

US Census Bureau: The total number of children under age 5 was 21 million in 2008, or 6.9 percent of the total population, compared with 19.2 million and 6.8 percent in 2000.

86 pediatric deaths from H1N1 in the US out of a population of 21,000,000.

4735 reported deaths worldwide out a population of over 6,700,000,000.

Now, Let's all take a relieved deep breath! While recognizing that it's early in the flu season, H1N1 looks to be a mild influenza strain. I hope it doesn't mutate into a deadly strain, but if it does the vaccine would be useless anyway. (Many people who had the earlier strain of the Spanish flu caught the mutated strain and died even though they had antibodies for the first strain. Read the book, if you have a few hours.)

I'm not getting the vaccine.

But just to play with your mind -- here's a report that the CDC overestimated Swine Flu cases.