s"wine" flu

This will be a nice and simple post. The following is a list of the number of deaths worldwide as a result of all the major diseases, accidents and illnesses as computed by the world health organization:

Worldwide Deaths in millions
Coronary heart disease 7.20
Stroke and other cerebrovascular diseases 5.71
lower respiratory infections 4.18
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 3.02
Diarrhoeal diseases 2.16
HIV/AIDS 2.04
Tuberculosis 1.46
Trachea, bronchus, lung cancers 1.32
Road traffic accidents 1.27
Prematurity and low birth weight 1.18

For the sake of it let’s throw in Malaria and influenza at 881,000 in 2006 and 250-500,000 yearly respectively.

Now let’s take a look at the flipside, how many deaths have occurred worldwide as a result of swine flu? The first swine flu death occurred on April 13th 2009. As of June 15th the total death toll was 164. So to compute the number of worldwide deaths expected over the coming year simply multiply 164 by 6 which gives 984. not a very frightening death toll if you consider more people die per week from malaria (1690), and that isn't even on the list of top ten killers. so let’s try and make the figures a little more respectable in comparison to the media attention its receiving, lets add a margin of error of 100,000 (pretty big margin don’t you think)? Wait a minute; the death toll still doesn’t reach the accepted range of figures for influenza, i.e. regular flu. So why all the commotion?

Don’t need to search long until you find this article:

GlaxoSmithKline led drug makers higher while British Airways was the hardest hit in a general sell-off of airline stocks in London. In Europe, shares in Swiss drug maker Roche jumped.

Vaccines from Roche, which sells Tamiflu, and GSK, maker of Relenza, have been shown to work against viral samples of the new disease. The drugs were also used to help protect against outbreaks of bird flu in Asia, providing windfall profits for the companies.

But wait a minute, I thought Tamiflu was ineffective? Well I guess Roche have found a way of securing their losses, what a coincidence!! In all honesty, I feel sorry for people who believe this is anything more than overhyped scare tactics, just like sars, bird flu, mad cow disease, and to a greater extent 9/11 and WMD's. You people all need to wake up now. Have you never heard the saying fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! Well sorry to be the bearer of bad news but this is at least the 5th time you've all been fooled since the turn of the century, doesn’t speak volumes of your mental capabilities now does it?

I don't know about you lot, but I'm off to book a cheap flight to Mexico, and if I get swine flu you know what I will do about it, absolutely nothing. If my immune system can fight off malaria, typhoid and influenza the whole pig thing will be a walk in the park for it!!