Mortality Rate of H1N1, a.k.a. Swine Flu
Just reading information about H1N1, a.k.a. the Swine Flu… here are some thoughts:
The Flu Pandemic of 1918 had a mortality rate of about 10% - 20% of those infected and about 1% of the global population.
The Swine Flu Pandemic (yes it is classified as a pandemic! read here.) doesn’t seem so easy to get a mortality rate for. One estimate was 6%-10% (back in May)… but I will give it a shot…
The CDC (@CDCFlu) reports as of 09/04 that there were 9,047 hospitalized cases in the US (they stopped reporting all reported cases a while ago but at last count ( 07/24) was >43,000) and the number of deaths was 593. So the mortality rate of people entering a hospital with H1N1 is ~6.5%.
Looking at the last number of reported cases of H1N1 (not just hospitalizations), I estimate the total number of unique cases of H1N1 in the country to be up to ~52,000 cases. This implies that a more realistic mortality rate of H1N1 is really ~1.1% (all numbers are for the US only).
These numbers are including the relative “lull” in the spread of the virus during the summer months. It will be interesting to see what develops in the coming weeks and with the distribution of the vaccination next month.
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