Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Thu Apr 30, 2009 8:01 am
The Infamous IHGN1 Pandemic
I have just created a new virus. All it does is erect one skin wart on your left eyebrow, and 1 in 100 people who get it suddenly drop dead. It is contagious, like the common cold. I'm going to call it "Infectious Headline-Grabbing Neurosis"
Now, this disease was just created (by me), so therefore it's a "new" illness as far as any particular population is concerned.
So I kidnap 7 people--one from each continent--and I infect them with this disease. They go on to infect 5 other people, so now the total infected worldwide is 12. One dies, the rest recover, and my virus is kaput.
Technically, this is a "pandemic."
A pandemic is simply a "potentially serious" infectious disease that is "new" to the populations of or more continents. It does not imply any particular disease incidence.
Malaria
Now, another example: Malaria
Malaria infects 350 million people a year!! That's 5% of the world's population, give or take. Most malaria is concentrated into certain 3rd world populations in Africa, South America, and Southern Asia. Malaria is a shitty disease that will seriously fuck you up. Now, with tons of support to problem areas, we've got the yearly deaths down to a mere 1 million.
Compare my virus to Malaria: 12 infections Vs 350 million; 1 death vs 1 million. By any particular measure, malaria is at least 1 million times worse than the IHGN1 virus.
So naturally, malaria is a "pandemic", right? No!! Since Malaria is endemic (common) to all the areas it's currently seen in, it's not "new" and therefore not technically a pandemic.
This upsets me, so being a Mad Scientist, I find 5 people in Europe and inject them with Malaria. I release a million "Anopheles" mosquitos in the area to make it transmissible. Before all those mosquitos die, they infect 5 more people. So now 10 people in Europe have Malaria. They all get over it, none die. Now, Malaria is a pandemic.
The "Malaria Pandemic" spreads across the news media like it's the upcoming apocalypse, even though it's no worse than it was last year.
H3N2 Will Kill 10,000+ Americans This Year! Close the Airports!
 H3N2 was one of the prominent influenza strains in the 2007-2008 flu season. The regular, every-day influenza virus kills 36,000 Americans per year. It is in the top 15 most likely causes of death in the USA. Hank (a fellow writer here at Latewire) just came down with the flu yesterday!
Is it a pandemic? No because the Flu is not new.
So if swine flu hasn't even killed 200 people worldwide, and we already have problems getting people vaccinated for this known killer of tens of thousands, where should our focus lie?
Obviously swine flu has to be contained as its death rate is significantly higher than the regular flu, but there's no reason to be afraid of getting out of bed and going to work. You're far more likely to crash your car and die on the way there then to even personally know anybody who got swine flu. Not to mention that if by some fucked up perturbation of mathematics you actually get swine flu, there are plenty of anti-viral medications to boost your chances of survival from around 93/100 to in the ball-park of 975/1,000.*
Don't be a ignorant tool of the sensationalist media, just go to work, live your life, and STFU.
*UPDATE: New numbers show swine flu isn't any more deadly than the regular flu.
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