- Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –
If you look no further than the latest headlines, you might think a worldwide flu pandemic was already underway with a very real threat to millions of lives.
While there are many unanswered questions early on in the outbreak of flu from Mexico, it is crucial to remember that the number of deaths and reported infections remain small — even if its spread across the globe has proved worryingly rapid.
While the infected need access to medical care and anti-viral drugs, the rest of the world needs an inoculation against scary statistics and misinformation.
The Internet Age allows facts and rumour to spread almost instantaneously. But knowing of outbreaks across the globe must not be confused with risks of catching the disease.
Already in this outbreak, Lebanon’s health minister has called for a halt to the national custom of greeting one another with kisses. Several countries including Russia and China have banned pork imports from Mexico and parts of the United States in the belief that meat could spread the flu.
So far, up to 149 are reported to have died of swine flu in Mexico. The World Health Organisation has upgraded the level of pandemic threat to four on a scale of six — sustained human-to-human transmission. Stage five signals an “imminent” pandemic.
However, influenza is a big killer every year, with or without a pandemic.
WHO estimates flu kills upward of 250,000 to 500,000 people year after year. “Normal” flu epidemics infect 3 to 5 million a year. Statistics are complicated by inconsistent reporting. Flu often leads to other ailments that end up being listed as the ultimate cause of death.
Flu’s typical victims are the elderly, the infirm or the young. The difference with swine flu outbreak in Mexico is that otherwise healthy adults aged 20-50 are vulnerable.
But so far the new swine flu death rates are lower than other recent pandemic scares, a report by Barclays Capital notes. The 2,200 swine flu infections reported have resulted in deaths in 7 percent of cases. Avian flu has killed 61 percent of the 421 people infected since 1997. The death rate from SARS was around 10 percent.
Outside Mexico, 50 infections have been reported in the United States, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Spain and Scotland. But health experts are baffled that infections outside Mexico appear to be milder and have caused no deaths.
The world’s most recent flu pandemic 41 years ago was the 1968 Hong Kong outbreak, which claimed one million lives.
Historically, pandemics occur about three times a century. But like predictions of the next big earthquake, medical experts profess they have no idea when to expect the next pandemic.
Inevitably, comparisons end up turning back to the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920, which killed more than 50 million people, or 2.5 percent of the world’s population.
That scourge followed the massive troop movements of World War One at a time of poor communications and before the invention of penicillin and modern healthcare systems. Post-war censorship rules restricted access to news, which limited the ability of communities to make informed decisions to protect themselves against the spread of the flu.
The descent into a global pandemic is not inevitable. Air travel may spread the disease in its early stages, but modern communications and medicine can arm us to respond quickly as the disease evolves.
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I’ve seen this all before in 1977 when we lined up to get our “swine flu” shot in the Air Force. Now, like then, we have no idea if it’s “the big one” or not. Use common sense and don’t buy the hype.
I think there’s a difference in HOW it’s affecting people. It isnt affecting the elderly alone, it’s affecting ALL ages, whereas the flu we are used to, affects the elderly and at risks and those are the ones that are dying more readily. But that isnt the case with the swine flu. It’s affecting & killing all ages/risk groups. And the vaccine TwinFlu or whatever - they are only going to give it to the elderly and at risk ones. What about the rest of us?!?!?!
just a quick question; in your article you mention that the 1918 to 1920 flu pandemic was set against the backdrop of a world without penicillin. How is the development of antibiotics relevant to a viral infection for which they are useless against?
I suggest you look at the update WHO report as of yesterday.
7 confirmed deaths all in Mexico. Not in the hundreds. It is after all flu season and now anyone with a sniffle will panic
And as for the penicillin, whilst not effective against viral flu, it will do the business against the opportunistic bacterial infections which are often the killer complications of flu itself.
“The numbers are way too low to draw any conclusions from since the ‘error bar’ is huge. This flu is essentially ‘contained’ at the moment, since we’re not seeing infections doubling every day.”
You say the error bar is huge, then you go on to rely on the erroneous information to decide infections are not doubling. You have no idea how many infections there are! No one does right now. It can take 1-4 days to identify this virus in a single patient. There are tens of millions of poor people in Mexico with no real health care.
As for this editorial-it is so lacking in scientific merit that I question Rueters judgment. To say that the number of deaths is not so worrying because the number of total cases is probably much higher-how do you know there are not now or soon many more deaths? And to think that our health care system will be any help, how absurd. It would be utterly overwhelmed by the first hundred thousand-the hospitals are already full! What killed millions of people during the Spanish Flu was lack of care. Their loved ones were sick or dead, and they lay in bed, dehydrated and drowning as their lungs filled with fluid. Do more research, talk to a virologist!
Jim - most flu is a blend. This is a new blend, but nothing ’special’. It happens to be H1N1, which is the same as the ‘Spanish Flu’ of 1918, and deaths in the 20-50 age group is particularly unusual (similar, in fact, to the 1918 flu). But Eric’s main argument is completely sound. The numbers are way too low to draw any conclusions from since the ‘error bar’ is huge. This flu is essentially ‘contained’ at the moment, since we’re not seeing infections doubling every day.
…and with the seemingly omni-present 24/7 media coverage of Iraq, the US Presidency and “the economy” losing its collective luster, unfortunately “the media” has a new focal point — and it includes the easiest and most dangerous words that can be woven into journalism: “could” and “might.” If we removed those words alone from the average daily newscast there would be a lot of “dead air” to fill!
Sorry, but unknowns are scary. We don’t know about a lot of things in this: the source, infection rates, death rates, even mutation rates. Even your estimates amount to random guesses based on too-little information.
Young, otherwise health people are dying in Mexico from a new and poorly-defined virus. Comparing it to seasonal flu deaths is unfair because those deaths are usually the “otherwise vulnerable.” It’s sad, but we’re used to this. We’re not used to thinking that WE could die from being sneezed on. That’s scary stuff. That’s good cause for reasonable concern.
Then, factor in the unreasonable reactions that are bound to come up. Politicians that want to be re-elected by unreasonable constituents are, without any doubt, going to be pressured into making unreasonable decisions.
Then, factor in the opportunistic reactions, like using any old excuse that comes along to protect against imports competing with local producers. There’s bound to be a lot of that.
A lot of stuff is going to happen the next while and little of it will be good. Most of it will be human-caused nonsense, but that’s just the way it is. I don’t see how blaming the media will make any difference. If they didn’t report every little tidbit of information, updated hourly, with detailed comparisons to every other epidemic that ever happened, then the bloggers would do it for them. People will be as afraid as they want to be, and potentially-deadly unknowns are scary.
An ignorant analysis predicated on the two mistaken beliefs that 7% is a low mortality rate and that waiting until the problem is obviously a serious problem, as indicated by the number of cases, is a safe plan.
The mortality rate in the 1918 flu pandemic was 2%. Multiply that by 50 million and see what you get. SARS and Avian influenza have thousands only or less. The growth rate in an influenza epiemic is exponential. Once you have lots of cases in your community you are guaranteed thousands of cases very soon. Do the math, read some history, read something about epidemic influenza, and learn.
While labled Swine Flu, this is a hybrid containing DNA from Avian Flu, but is aparently easily transmitable between humans. To try to say this is just another Flu bug is less than factual. Personaly I would take this out break seriously.
The worry concerning viruses that transfer from farm grown animals to humans and then from human to human has been greatly ignored by the media, in spite of warnings from public health officials for years that a terrible pandemic was not only possible, but inevitable. If anything, due to politics, governments around the world are being too conservative in dealing with this outbreak. When it comes to statistics it way too early to make any judgement about the percentage of deaths. People need to take this seriously and do the one thing that is most protctive and wash their hands every chance they get, at least for 25 to 50 seconds (try counting some time this is much longer than you think).
The difference between swine flu and SARs was how the virus was spread. Swine flu affects many more people more rapidly. Suppose you have an attack rate of just 10% and a case fatality rate of 1% (significantly lower than the 7% cited by Eric and this is possible if the denominator in Mexico’s numbers are much lower than estimated) in metropolitan area of 20m people. 2m will fall ill and 20,000 will die in that city alone. Lets not be too flippant about this.
Amen Eric! We’ve been talking amongst ourselves at work about just how much hype their is in this story — you’d think we were experiencing the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak all over again…
Wow! If the rest of the media would refrain from using attention grabbing headlines and statistics, our lives would be much more free from media induced stress. Thank you.
Es correcto el enfoque de analizar la información de manera más objetiva. Es necesario estar prevenidos contra la falta de ética de los medios que propagan información del todo inexacta. Ojalá se profundice más en ese aspecto.
@”That scourge followed the massive troop movements of World War One at a time of poor communications and before the invention of penicillin and modern healthcare systems.”
What does penicillin have to do with viral influenza?? Do you wanted to say that now we are safer because we have antibiotics? Would be quite monumental ignorance.
It is to early to declare a death rate of the swine flu. The 7 procent you state is based on uncertain information from mexico. WHO says only 7 deaths are confirmed to be caused by H1N1, or swine flu. The statistics are also based on the number of reported cases who are hospitilaised. The real number of infected could be alot higher in mexico, if you count people who havent sought medical treatment. This would dramaticaly lower the death rate. My point is that you are basing this percentage on really bad statistics.
Finally, a journalist not succumbing to hysteria over this swine flu business. Thank you very much, sir, for an intelligent analysis of this viral outbreak. A shame other practitioners of the ‘media art’ still believe that ‘If it bleeds, it leads’.
Eric is absolutely right.
The media must stop scaring people with numbers that in the big picture are meaningless.
Thank you Eric for putting some sanity to this.