Is your ISP Influenza-ready?

Fri Apr 21 14:51:06 UTC 2006

Joseph S D Yao wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 08:29:10PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote:
> 
>>According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average
>>mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006,
>>and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004.

> Is there a report which extrapolates the UNREPORTED cases and estimates
> the mortality rate from that?  [And does anyone have any basis on which
> to make these guesses?]

Let's extrapolate from an event that I know of, and remember. In 1976, a 
particularly dangerous strain of flu, Victoria, was the influenza du 
jour. As in most strains, there were two versions: Victoria-B, where 
your life sucked for a few days, and then you got on with it, and 
Victoria-A, which was life threatening, and BTW, yet another "bird flu" 
entry. I'm not going to post a bunch of links, but if you want 
entertainment (or validation) "influenza victoria 1976" in Google will 
give you hours of interesting data.

I had the A strain, and was gravely ill. My lungs are scarred as though 
I had had tuberculosis, and I'm grateful that was the only damage. In 
just the area I lived in, there were multiple deaths reported. The 
outbreaks were localized, but quite dramatic in those geographical areas 
where it took off. I don't mean to add to the hysteria, but I also would 
prefer that you not discount it. Much will depend on your local area, on 
whether people are tightly clustered (NYC, LA), or thinly populated 
(Wyoming, North Dakota).

-- 
"You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms - you have to 
have the state with a monopoly on power," Condoleeza Rice, the US 
secretary of state, said at the end of her two-day visit to
Baghdad yesterday.             ...No Comment