Governments and authorities in general first wish to avoid public "panic" because they like to remain in control. Therefore they lie and minimize. That happens constantly.
Panic is of course a perfectly sensible reaction to something from which adrenaline-pumped high speed flight should be taken. Panic has evolutionary advantage.
<WHO has raised its estimate of flu deaths to 100 million
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With a 70% mortality, it would be a LOT worse than sars. Since something like 30% of people would be infected before the disease starts to fizzle out and there are 6 billion people, there would be about 2 billion infected and 70% of 2 billion is 1.4 billion.
Which number is wrong in their book? Maybe the 70% is based on false numbers. For example in Beijing last December I spent 4 days feeling very, very bleak with what could have been avian flu or sars for all I knew. I didn't get into any official statistics.
Maybe there are lots of people like that and the 70% are just those who get such a serious reaction that somebody carts them off to hospital or a doctor and are therefore identified. They distort the mortality figures upwards because unsurprisingly, it's the sickest people who die.
Or perhaps the WHO has allowed for people reacting dramatically, wearing masks, avoiding buses, pubs, restaurants and anywhere else where other people might put them at risk. Maybe they've also assumed a vaccine before the disease really gets going.
Or, more likely, they are simply wrong and can't figure things out. They couldn't figure out sars mortality even when the disease was well under way. They were talking about 2% or 3% mortality when it was already obvious to me that it would be 7% and possibly 10%. Message 18807952 It was 10% when the cases were counted.
It took from February Message 18629116 to A by 24 March, it was already obvious that the fatality rate was high Message 18748591 RED ALERT issued with death rate numbers forming: Message 18748714 7 April my 7% death rate calculation issued: Message 18807952 while authorities were still talking about 4% - I think they even lowered that 4% to 2% for a while after that.
By 14 April, a 10% death rate was on the cards Message 18838992
Dopey WHO odds here: Message 18837709 corrected by epidemiological expert Mqurice Message 18839012 who won an award for his analysis: siliconinvestor.com
H5N1 looks like the MAIN EVENT. Sars was just a crowd warm-up match.
Mqurice |
