Imagine I’m sitting in the student union at American University holding a gun to my own head forcing myself to write this, because effectively that’s what I’m doing. I can’t concentrate on anything, can’t take speed adderall because coke (zero, the black stuff in plastic bottles) costs $1.20 per liter (and come the fuck on) and I refuse to sit here and not do anything. So. Now that the stage is set for a scintillating read, I’m sure you’ll continue with bated breath.
H1N1 (to be an overly accurate horse’s ass, 2009 A (H1N1)) is on my mind. I have asthma. My father has COPD (like emphysema, only doctors can make you feel stupid by speaking alphabet soup to you). If either of us catches this swine flu shit, odds are not good. Probably slightly better for me (I’m 45 years younger), but you know? Not really great for either of us. Well, depending on who you believe. The WHO and the CDC have contradicted themselves on the issue, and the data sets they’re using are pretty flawed anyway.
More data out there than I care to go into, but the CDC, for instance, is tracking “confirmed and probable” cases. No distinction made between the two. That’s like the difference between Jim Bob saw a possum and Jim Bob thinks he saw a possum.
In July, the CDC said 40% of all Americans were likely to be infected with swine flu. That’s a big fucking number. How does the CDC determine these numbers? As it turns out, they might as well be guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar.
Quoting from Pundita (way back in May of this year):
The CDC has no idea how many deaths there are each year from the flu because the number is a computer-generated guess based on mathematical modeling — a model that’s been used for more than 40 years, and which needs serious updating.
As the CDC’s spokesman, Curtis Allen admitted a few years ago to medical journalist Kelly O’Meara, it’s not a “real” number. He told her, “There are a couple problems with determining the number of deaths related to the flu because most people don’t die from the influenza…We don’t know exactly how many people get the flu each year because it’s not a reportable disease and most physicians don’t do the test [nasal swab] to indicate whether it’s influenza.”
However, using the CDC’s own data, O’Meara managed to turn up that, “The greatest number of actual influenza deaths recorded since 1979 were 3,006 in 1981.”
That’s recorded deaths, not actual deaths, so who fucking knows. The number is bound to be higher, especially among infants, the elderly, and the “immuno-compromised” which is a hell of a word. Most flu deaths are probably attributed to pneumonia.
From Deirdre Imus writing for The Huffington Post in July:
Influenza is notoriously hard to predict, and some experts have shied away from a forecast. At a CDC swine flu briefing Friday, one official declined to answer repeated questions about her agency’s own estimate.
(That article I link to is worth reading as it makes you realize the CDC might be working just about as well as FEMA, and swine flu just might become that agency’s Katrina Event).
Internationally, the WHO really isn’t offering much in the way of comfort, either. The WHO declared swine flu as a phase 4 pandemic on 27 April of this year (a Monday). By Wednesday of that week, it was a phase 5 on WHO’s hit parade. It reached maturity at phase 6 (there is no phase 7) on 11 June. Based on what? Country-by-country reporting of the number of cases.
We’ve already seen how reliable that is in the US. Maybe other (smaller) European countries have better data collection and reporting systems (Jean Pierre definitely saw a possum), but I can’t imagine most of the second and third world countries providing much useful data (not a condemnation—they’re beleaguered, that’s all I’m saying).
In July, the WHO stated that “as many as two billion people could become infected.” Could? Awesome. I could shit myself if that’s wrong in a bad direction. That number would be a global analog to the influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed a third of the population of Europe (two bil’s about a third of the planet). In our much more crowded, connected, New York-to-Tokyo-to-Rome, world, this fucking thing could spread like … the common cold.
However, in August, the WHO said the symptoms of swine flu were usually no more severe than “regular” flu, and that most people who contracted it would recover. Cool! Crisis over!
Well uh maybe not. Before announcing swine flu was like regular flu, only bacon flavored, the WHO announced they intended to stop publishing data on the course of the pandemic, but would keep everyone informed when another country caught it.
WHO will no longer issue the global tables showing the numbers of confirmed cases for all countries. However, as part of continued efforts to document the global spread of the H1N1 pandemic, regular updates will be provided describing the situation in the newly affected countries. WHO will continue to request that these countries report the first confirmed cases and, as far as feasible, provide weekly aggregated case numbers and descriptive epidemiology of the early cases.
That doesn’t make a whole lot of fucking sense to me, but it could be consistent with a “this data is useless and we’re not even sure what it means” situation. It’s a little troubling that they’re basically saying “let us know when you get it and how the early cases go, but other than that, we’ll call you.” Troubling because the latest research I’ve read on it (which may not be the latest research) indicates swine flu may have a mortality rate comparable to avian flu, because the two behave the same way (except for the whole swine flu being a fuck of a lot easier to catch thing). And what is the WHO basing the statement “most people who contract it will recover” on? Positive thinking? If they don’t track the later stages of the disease, we might be looking back on a world depopulated by “pneumonia.”
There’s a lot of other information out there, a lot of it goofy, but there’s enough credible material and second-hand “this is a weird thing I heard from my doctor” rumors floating around (here’s a good one: people in the UK are apparently being told, by NHS, not to go to their doctor if they think they may have swine flu. WAT?) to make me really wonder if we’re looking down the barrel of something that may be a hell of a lot more serious than we’re being told. And just maybe we’re not being told because it’s a hell of a lot worse than the WHO, CDC, etc. can deal with.
It’s got me worried. Especially since, you know … I have asthma (if you read that last link, you’d know why I’m basically writing my will if I catch this shit).
