Academic

SWINE FLU: More infectious than ordinary flu. ?Ferguson and his collaborators, part of the World H?

By Glenn Reynolds

SWINE FLU: More infectious than ordinary flu. “Ferguson and his collaborators, part of the World Health Organization?s (WHO) Rapid Pandemic Potential Assessment Collaboration, determined that 6,000?32,000 individuals had been infected in Mexico by late April. The team also used epidemiological data and information about the virus? genetic diversity to determine that the swine flu virus has a basic reproductive rate of 1.2-1.6, a number that shows how easily the virus spreads within a population. The seasonal flu, which hits countries, typically hovers around 1.2, whereas the second, more severe wave of the 1918 flu reached about 2.” But there’s good news: “The swine flu has a fatality rate of around 0.4%, the researchers say, nowhere near the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which claimed over 50 million lives between 1918 and 1920, but closer to the milder 1957 influenza pandemic, which claimed nearly 1 million.” Well, sort of good news.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on May 13, 2009 (boomark / email).