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245 Comments
- bixby1, on 05/02/2009, -2/+273The Spanish flu killed 50 Million people worldwide. I'm trying to wrap my brain around that and it's not workin'
- purelithium, on 05/02/2009, -19/+250Another way to look at this is that the common flu kills 36000 people a year in the US alone. This Swine flu is nothing.
- Devine122, on 05/02/2009, -13/+172The bird flu and the swine flu are just media hype. How do you even compare 200 deaths to 50 million on the same article?
- SarahSue, on 05/02/2009, -2/+94"unnamed flu pandemic" - were they just not creative enough to come up with a name?
- thetrev, on 05/03/2009, -4/+84But of course, in the media's eyes this is THE WORST PANDEMIC EVAR
- Kazbaeden, on 05/03/2009, -2/+67"The virus, a mix of pig, bird, and human genes..."
Holy ***** I didn't realize this. Al Gore was almost right, but this whole time we should have been looking for ManBirdPig! - borez, on 05/03/2009, -4/+65Hold the ***** on here, for one you can take the 2009 swine flu pandemic straight off that little map, because it isn't even close to being a pandemic. Period. And the 1997 & 2003 so called pandemics can go as well while you're about it.
- digid, on 05/03/2009, -3/+58Since you must like stats and pretty pictures with graphs and such(stereotyping you because you provide no context to your stats you're spouting off) let me draw up some histograms for you:
Influenza Death/Age Histogram for your 36000 deaths
X....................................X
XX...............................XX
XXX..........................XXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
----------------------------------
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Feared Influenza Death/Age Histogram from "Swine Flu"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
----------------------------------
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
It wasn't the media starting the panic it was the scientists and health officials that thought a virus had gone human-to-human that has the kill rate of the 2nd histogram above. The media just reacted to that. Even if this flu outbreak turns out to be mild and controlled scientists still haven't changed their mind that there is high likelihood of a serious deadly pandemic sometime in the future. Even if 10 people die at the beginning of an outbreak doesn't mean that the outbreak isn't dangerous. Go watch a zombie movie or something and learn about exponential growth. Spanish Flu started out with 1-2 deaths. At the start it must have been, what you like to call, "nothing" as well. - pradaaddict, on 05/03/2009, -6/+49It's what swine flu could become if we don't contain it, thats what scares people
- braveheart007, on 05/02/2009, -1/+32This article (image) looks like it's to prove that it's just media hype
- inactive, on 05/03/2009, -4/+34i ate bacon today, do i have swine flu?
- WhoDoneIt, on 05/03/2009, -1/+29http://doihaveswineflu.org/
- Pother, on 05/03/2009, -2/+29They told you right in the graphic! Look at the green number...
16 out of every 1000 people died. 1.6%
Now look at the same rates for other pandemics... way less.
Everyone is freaking out WAY TOO MUCH about this current flu. - DevinWatson, on 05/03/2009, -0/+26From here: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-relate ...
- AMD64MM, on 05/03/2009, -1/+26Missingno. is that you?
- nemofishclt, on 05/03/2009, -2/+26Damn women got us while we were down
- iceballz, on 05/02/2009, -4/+25This image really shows why all of this swine flu madness is just that, madness. We haven't had a serious pandemic flu outbreak in over 40 years, and that outbreak, like most, heavily effected a group of people that did not have the health care to fight off the affliction. The "seasonal flu" has claimed 13,000 lives due to complications related to the illness since January, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/28/regular.f ... we haven't had a "pandemic" outbreak that deadly since 1968.
- aapala, on 05/03/2009, -3/+24Yeah... pretty crazy. The entire world population was less than 2 billion at the time, so it was actually estimated to have killed more than 2.5% of the entire world population at the time.
- staffell, on 05/03/2009, -0/+20...and it's the media fault because they're completely embellishing it for profit's sake. They always like to put the worst possible spin on things like this.
"we don't want to freak anyone out"
***** bastards - Llanowar, on 05/03/2009, -1/+20You mean if the number of deaths of the Spanish Flu was applied to the US.
We do not know how much of an impact the Spanish Flu would have in this day. It would have a chance of spreading far more rapidly, but we also have a far higher chance of curing it before it becomes too big. - OptionalPirate, on 05/03/2009, -2/+19And here's why Madagascar has no problems with the flu.
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/6861/1216502342 ... - crammaz, on 05/03/2009, -0/+17No bird flu was not media hype.
In fact because of the very real danger it showed, our governments and health authorities are so much better prepared to deal with swine flu (even though it now seems swine flu was a media beat-up)
The ability to mass produce and develop vaccines and Anti-Biotic stock piles did not exist before bird flu...
Bird Flu was (is) a very strong and damaging virus, but did not spread that easily... Swine flu appears to be the opposite where it spreads quite easily but is comparatively weak. The real worry, a concern addressed as the Armageddon virus by Prof John Oxford of the Royal Hospital London is that the two viruses could mix and we would have a huge threat on our hands...
Having said that however Prof Oxford did say that due to the previous scare of bird flu we do have a vaccine and the policies and plans to hopefully limit its impact... - MelekTawus, on 05/03/2009, -1/+16That is an inaccurate statistic. The CDC is including all deaths by pneumonia, whether or not the pneumonia was caused by the flu. Many of these were the elderly, for whom pneumonia is a frequent cause of death and can be brought on by a number of causes, including the common cold.
"Meanwhile, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS),"influenza and pneumonia" took 62 034 lives in 2001—61 777 of which wereattributed to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was flu virus positively identified. Between 1979 and 2002, NCHS data show an average 1348 flu deaths peryear (range 257 to 3006)" - ksclee, on 05/03/2009, -1/+15Both flu pandemics in 1997 & 2003 killed exactly 257 people... *insert your own conspiracy here*.
- flynnfx, on 05/03/2009, -0/+14Anyone else notice the typo? Honk Kong?
- wTheOnew, on 05/03/2009, -0/+14Here's my plan: .001% (600,000) of the world gets infected I'll start to be concerned, .1% and I'll start loading up on food and ammo, 10% and I'm heading to the mountains.
We're at what? .0000005ish%? Looks like I have some time before I have to start worrying. - bobbi21, on 05/03/2009, -0/+13while this is being hyped up a bit more than I think is needed, if you have a pandemic that is killing more ppl than car accidents, alcohol, and gunfire...I think it's a bit too late to do anything... we're all quite screwed by then..
- smashhell, on 05/03/2009, -0/+12Hold on, the H5N1 or SARS was all just a hype ? O_O
- simbait, on 05/03/2009, -1/+13Inaccurate doesn't show how many were infected and the kill ratio. Avian and Sars were troubling due to their high death ratio. Thankfully the viruses were contained.
- Sornos, on 05/03/2009, -0/+12It's not about whether something is politically correct or not. At those times, they didn't know where it originated. Now we know the source of the swine flu is pigs. Same with the avian flu of a few years back, that was from birds.
- borez, on 05/03/2009, -0/+12No, you stop being stupid:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8031761. ... - bobbi21, on 05/03/2009, -1/+12The problem is, if you ever divert a world wide disaster everyone will think it wasn't a big deal and the gov, medical community, etc just hyped it up. If there ever is a world wide disaster, everyone will blame the government, medical community, etc for not being able to divert it.
No winning. - Schober43, on 05/03/2009, -2/+13Well, back then, they didn't have the science and medicine as we do today. So if you got sick, your chances of dying were much greater.
- 9bpm9, on 05/03/2009, -1/+12Uhhh, that's the point of the chart buddy.
- IWDA4, on 05/03/2009, -0/+11"Because the strain has not circulated since in humans since 1968, no one under 30 years old has immunity to this strain."
Wouldn't it be 40 years old? - specialcases, on 05/03/2009, -0/+10The bubonic plague/black death killed 75 million worldwide.
I know its not flu but still,
big numbers.. - bernie_a, on 05/03/2009, -0/+10This map is so wrong, they even put the "spanish flu" in spain even though it started in the US and has little to do with Spain itself.
"Although the first cases of the disease were registered in Continental US and the rest of Europe long before getting to Spain. The 1918 Flu received it's nickname "Spanish Flu" because Spain, a neutral country in WWI, had no special censorship for news against the disease and its consequences. Hence the most reliable news came from Spain, giving the false impression that Spain was the most -if not the only- affected zone."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu - Baloo, on 05/03/2009, -2/+11As of 3rd May the WHO official reports state that there have have been 19 (read that again nineteen) deaths in Mexico and 1 death in the US. That is a grand total of 20 officially dead from swine flu. TWENTY... the media and the guy who made this map needs to really settle down. http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_05_03/en/index.htm ...
- RADRaze2KX, on 05/03/2009, -1/+10I'm more started that we went from 1.86 Billion people to 6.77 Billion people in less than 100 years... by the time I'm 80 (in roughly 55 years), what will the population be then? I'll have no room to ride my mobility scooter :(
- inactive, on 05/03/2009, -1/+10the pandemic is often attributed to the piles of rotting corpses hanging around all over Europe at the time
- spepin, on 05/03/2009, -0/+9Yes. Settle your will up quickly, before it's too late.
- MrMugoo, on 05/03/2009, -0/+9Wow, this really makes the Swine Flu look like nothing. Thanks media for blowing this ***** wayyy out of proportion.
- cynicalbrit94, on 05/03/2009, -2/+11Anybody else notice that a hell of a lot of stuff happened in 1918.
End of WWI
That damn flu epidemic
America finally gives women rights
<Insert a load of stuff I forgot> - Breogan, on 05/03/2009, -0/+9Actually, the spanish flu originated in the U.S. (in Kansas). It received that name because Spain wasn't involved in WW1, so there was no censorship for news regarding diseases and other war related issues. Since it was the spanish media that brought the majority of the cases into the public attention, it gave the false impression that the origin and most affected country was Spain, which was not the case.
- Biscuitz, on 05/03/2009, -1/+9China is Asia. They're not two different places.
- sodbustin, on 05/03/2009, -0/+8The thing that frightened me most about that graphic was that it shows the world's population has increased by 400 million in just 6 years.
- rowbot, on 05/03/2009, -0/+8http://www.shouldibeworriedaboutswineflu.com
- inactive, on 05/03/2009, -2/+9Just call it the Super Sexy Flu.
I like that name. - bobburn1, on 05/03/2009, -0/+7They have, just look up a map with "population density."
- macslut, on 05/03/2009, -0/+7The 1918 Flu shouldn't be pointing to Spain. The first registered cases were in the U.S. and it spread elsewhere in Europe before hitting Spain. Spain wasn't even one of the hardest hit countries. The only reason people sometimes call it the Spanish Flu is because Spain was a neutral country in WWI, and thus was willing to openly report it. Also their number is low, newer estimates put it at up to 100 million.
Other max estimates:
50% of the world's population got it = 1 Billion people
10% of them died
2 X as many died from the flu than from WWI
17 million people died in India
But keep in mind that the world was at war back then. There are all kinds stories of things like ghost ships arriving to ports filled with dead soldiers. There weren't things like Tamiflu, nor was there a vaccine...or possibility of getting one within 6 months of first detection. There was no WHO to take aggressive measures against it. And because of the lack of knowledge worldwide as well as the distraction of WWI, it had the opportunity to break out in countries as if it was a first break out, and wasn't taken as seriously as it should have been early on.
Further more, there weren't other medicines in place to treat secondary bacterial infections or other complications. -
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