Quote:
Originally Posted by Phaneuf3
Well, to be fair the hype was disproportionately high.
Cancer for example killed 7.9 million people worldwide in 2007. Multiply that by 100 years to get a century long figure (yes, yes oversimplified I know but its close enough so lets run with it) and you're at 790 million or about 24 times the population of Canada
I could only find the US stats so we'll extrapolate those to worldwide figured but... Car accidents kill about 42,000 every year in the states. If you extrapolate at that rate to the population of the world that's about 860,000 per year. Multiply that by a hundred years and you have 86,000,000 or about two and a half times the population of Canada.
Sure, those figures aren't the actual ones and are just extrapolations of current rates and furthermore its a bit suspect to take the US car accident fatality rate and simply multiply it based on world population for obvious reasons. But... they're just as valid as comparing medicine from the 1900's to today.
H1N1 is bad and all but the hype did get a bit overblown.
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In the space of 27 months from March 1918 to June 1920 it is estimated that a full 1/3 of the worlds population was infected and conservatively 40 million people died....from the same strain as H1N1.
Extroplate that.
Obviously the medical field has made massive strides since then and likely has a much better and quicker response to anything similar this time around. That doesnt mean that the "hype" as you put it, is anything but appropriate in one way...education for prevention.
Yes, it seemed to of been made a bigger deal than first thought, but it isnt anywhere close to over either. Not until we get into the winter months will we see what happens...hoefully nothing. In the mean time i think its great everyone knows about and can help prevent it from spreading....dont you?