a new pneumonic killer over in Europe....

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/140492/Million-hit-by-plague-worse-than-swine-flu-

from the article:

A doctor in Western Ukraine who did not want to be named, said:” We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.

“They look like they have been burned. It’s terrifying.”

---

Jordan .

Kelly

How Do You Live Your Dash?

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Did you see the other 2 top stories? The man who can taste words and are we being polluted by electricity.

Oh, the British press! This site is almost as good as the Sun, Star, National Enquirer!

A friend of mine just got back from Paris last week and no one there had heard of H1N1.

I bet most of the doctor's in this country are doing the same thing. I'd like to really know what the official CONFIRMED cases are of H1N1.

Kelly

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The CaleBlog and the Zoe Blog

I'm not sure what kind of medical testing/reporting biases might go into this, but there is some data on this on the CDC  website. It seems to show a large proportion are H1N1, although this [see quote below] might be a special population.  Heartbreaking for those affected, but definitely could be much worse if the bug was nastier (given CDC estimates of 20+million infected).

We may never know how many illnesses or deaths were prevented by the vaccination push and public awareness blitz. I'd like to think it is helping some, and I certainly don't begrudge the effort.

 http://www.cdc.gov/H1n1flu/update.htm

Quote:

The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) based on the 122 Cities Report continues to increase and has been higher than what is expected for six weeks now. In addition, 35 flu-related pediatric deaths were reported this week: 26 of these deaths were associated with laboratory confirmed 2009 H1N1; eight were influenza A viruses, but were not subtyped; and one was an influenza B virus. Since April 2009, CDC has received reports of 156 laboratory-confirmed pediatric 2009 H1N1 deaths, one influenza B death, and another 23 pediatric deaths that were laboratory confirmed as influenza, but the flu virus subtype was not determined.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

And if you look to the graph, it shows that only a little over 14,000 specimens were tested, just under 3000 testing positive for H1N1. That number a lone is telling. 14,000 out of how many millions of people in the US? Now, this is only showing for week 44 (which was the week ending November 7). Let's just say that number was throughout the 44 weeks - that's only 616,000 specimens that were tested in the US.

Again, I don't doubt that there isn't a problem and that it isn't out there, but what I want is actual confirmed cases by the CDC. If 616,000 specimens over the course of 44 weeks is the number for the US at this point in time, you can bet it's about that in other countries as well.

Putting that into the context of the whole world population, the number were looking at is significantly low (being that the world' population as of 2008 is 6,692,030,277).

Kelly

How Do You Live Your Dash?

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The CaleBlog and the Zoe Blog

The bigger the sample the better, but the CDC actually has a pretty robust sample to make statistical inferences about the rates of infection in the broader population. As a point of reference, most political polls are ~1000 people, so they have an order of magnitude more than that.  I think its pretty standard to use these techniques to form educated estimates of disease rates. While you may not know exactly how many infections there are, your estimate will be good enough to observe trends and regional patterns, and to develop plans for what to do next.   There may be advantages to more widespread testing, but I'd guess that improved accuracy of their estimates of infection rate is not worth the cost, especially if it must be traded off against vaccination or treatment.

btw- very off-the-cuff, but I threw the data (~14000 tests,  ~25% H1N1) into an online statistical power calculator, and it suggests that the estimated infection rate should be good, 99% of the time to within +/- 1% .  The CDC's nationwide estimates have a lot more uncertainty in them which may be related to how representative the set of 14,000 samples is to the whole population of people reporting flu-like symptoms, added demographic infomation, etc. I don't know the details of their national model, so this is just speculation on my part.

Yes 12, i see the comparison to the Star and the Sun as serious reliable sources :)

But , i would give the National Enquirer more gravitas. They have blown open stories on occasion that had the regular media a $ 1000 short and a month late !

They do on occasion get the story first and right. I guess the  key phrase here is 'on occasion'.

 I'd say they were the best of the worst. Kind of a damning praise , I guess.