The obnoxious swine flu hype ... random rambling

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So swine flu is the crisis de jour and all over the headlines. Alas, now, eventually we have the first 21 swine flu deaths in Germany (while the ordinary flu is reliably killing 20.000 people in Germany each year) and we have at least one man who died after getting the swine flu vaccine, and the headlines get ever shriller.

In the Ukraine, prime minister Tymoshenko of Orange revolution fame, running against her former co-revolutionary Yushchenko for the office or president, has invoked a state of emergency over the swine flu, scared the **** out of everyone if the below picture is any indication and is about to save the country from that dire threat, a few months ahead of the next elections. And I so hoped for another Orange Revolution. Who knows, maybe they'll creatively coin another term, say, the 'Black Flu' or the like.

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As the saying goes, where there is crisis, there is opportunity!

My uncle is an insurance broker, which in itself wouldn't be so bad. It is in light of his profession not surprising that he would (try to) sell insurances to his extended family either.

But to have his intern or clerk or whatever call me on my mobile at work to talk me into signing a contract for a 'immunisation damages insurance' (which wouldn't benefit me atm anyway, as for now I am probably not going to get immunised) while he is audibly talking in the background really is a little galling. First, he could have just asked me himself. And then, which is beyond that little slight, the real problem: He is trying to cash in on the current swine flu hysteria ...

There is no shame ...

 

Swine 'flu isn't that bad. I've had it and it was just like a bad cold. People always go over the top with these things. They forget the less 'glamorous' illnesses that kill thousands every year!

 

I opted not to inoculate myself purely out of laziness. Did not want to spend an afternoon getting a shot. Taking my chances with the oinkoinkflu. What I have been able to gather in between the panic alerts is that seriously ill young people might die of it which they usually dont with the normal flues. Then you need to be old as well as terminally ill. The normal case of the swine flue seems to be like a quite mild flue or severe cold. Disease sells though so we will probably have a new alert every year, birds, pigs what will it be next year? Fish flue?

 

I may have mentioned this in another thread, but what the heck.

One article I read a while ago said that it's not so much the severity of the flu that is a problem as it is the number of people who will be affected. The article said that on average, seasonal flu affects 5% of the population. The H1N1 flu is expected to affect 25 -- 30% of the population. This could result in serious disruptions of essential services, lost productivity, and critical drains on the medical system.

Still, though, it seems to me that if a large minority of the populace is merely sick for 4 or 5 days, with only a few* of those affected dying, it won't be significantly worse than seasonal flu, it'll just be a pain in terms of the workforce.

*Statistically the same as for seasonal flu or the common cold

 

I got into some seriously interesting (and scary) discussions at work by popping this question:

"If you knew for sure that a new, widespread and highly contageous disease has 90% mortality rate, while a brand new, yet untested vaccine against it might kill you in 10% of the cases while giving complete immunity in other 90% of cases, would you take the vaccine?"

While svine fly certainly doesn't meet either of the criteria above, it was scary how many people just stuck at the "...might kill you in 10% of cases" part of it and were readily rejecting the vaccine. Instead they were coming up with all sorts of cunning plans how they'd avoid all human contact for the next 6, 12 or 24 months or however long it'd take before the pandemic would have passed.

In short - we're doomed as soon as the next really nasty pandemic strikes.

 

You just made me think of Xan "We're all doomed!".

 

Sir Rechet,

That's some seriously deep stuff there. I mean, the scientific part of me, says you have to do what gives you the best chance of survival, which means taking the vaccine. Bad enough if you had to make that decision for yourself, but what about your kids. Heck, I only have one kid, but under the scenario you posted if me, my wife, and my kid all had the vaccine there's a decent chance at least one of us would die. (The chance of [EDIT] at least one of us dying [/EDIT] are 27.1% based on my crude calculations.)

 

Aldeth, you may need to redo that math. I've got a 72.9% chance of all three surviving. The math should be 0.9*0.9*0.9=0.729. Still, those aren't encouraging odds, but it's better than the disease: 0.1*0.1*0.1=0.001=0.1%

I had a flu a few weeks back. I have no idea what kind it was, but it acted about normal for me, that being feeling bad for a day, sick as a dog for the next (with fever), and sick but feeling better (and no fever) for the next two. I'm guessing it's just the regular variety, but not sure. No one else got it (which is funny since I leave the house far less then anyone else).

The legitimate, scientific worry over H1N1, as has been pointed out, is that no one has any immunity or resistance to it, so it'll hit a lot more of the population for the first year, maybe several years. I figure the scare will be over and it'll just be another flu every year by 2012.

 

I meant to say that there is a 27.1% chance that at least one of us will not survive, as 1 - 0.729 = 0.271. I'll edit my previous post.

That's actually the chance that all three of us die. The chance of either one, two, or all three of us dying is the 27.1%.

 

I had swine flu it was liks a bad cold which lasted 2 weeks.

 

...
Wait, if the odds of surviving the disease in the given hypothetical are only 10%, that means that the odds for the whole family surviving are 10% for each member, multiplied. That's 0.1*0.1*0.1, right?

 

What you said is true, but only if you elect to NOT get the vaccine.

Since I had already said that I would get vaccinated in this hypothetical example, that was not the criteria I was using in my calculation. Assuming you get the vaccine, the chance of all of you surviving are, as you correctly calculated, 0.9*0.9*0.9 = 72.9%. Or to put it another way, there is a 27.1% chance of at least one of the three of us dying.

The second easiest calculation is the chance of all three of us dying from the vaccine, which is 0.1*0.1*0.1 = 0.1%.

Just to complete the calculations, the chance of one of us dying (any combination of two surviving and one dying) are 3*(0.9*0.9*0.1) = 24.3%, and the chance of two dying (again in any combination) are 3*(0.9*0.1*0.1) = 2.7%.