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The new bird flu study
Who is at greatest risk from a pandemic? We now have more systematic data:
The authors used international mortality data from 27 countries and regions where there was a minimum of 80% death registration in the years 1915 to 1923, trying to correlate the wide variation in mortality with community attributes. By restricting their data set to these "registration areas," they are able to make more comparable comparisons between areas that differed in mortality. They selected two features of the communities that might indicate important differences, per capita income and latitude....
There was an extremely wide variation in excess mortality from country to country and region to region. Even within the same registration areas, for example, the Census of India, there is a 2.1% excess mortality attributed to the pandemic in Burma compared to a 7.8% in the Indian province of Berar.
...the single variable of per capita income in a country explains half of the variation in excess mortality [emphasis added].
It is possible that 95 percent of the losses of human life would come in the developing world. Here is much more.
It is, by the way, a mistake to think that the risk of this happening has gone down. The recent bird flu deaths in Egypt point to the ongoing danger. Nor should you think we have any real idea what is going on with bird flu in Nigeria.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 26, 2006 at 05:15 AM in Medicine | Permalink
Comments
Then why there was no such wide variation in excess mortality from country to country and region to region in the case of a pandemic like The Black Plague of 1348-50?
Posted by: Samy at Dec 26, 2006 10:50:59 AM
Well, given that even a "normal" flu is deadly for a specific group (mostly elderly), I'd say that neither Bird flu, nor the "normal" flu are truly understood and countered. However, I think the hype around the bird flu is greatly overblown.
If scaring people is a good thing, than BSE and Bird flu are truly good marketing strategies.
A short story from my grandparents village in Western Germany does show what media-hype of medical scare epidemics does to people. They don't serve any meat from cows or related animals, because they still fear that somehow BSE has survived and could threaten them. Even, when the meat in question, actually comes from Argentina...
So, I am very sceptic about this "new epidemic flu" and I think that it is again hyped out of proportion. Perhaps in the future, I won't be able to get any chicken meat, too, when I visit my grandparents...
Posted by: Max at Dec 26, 2006 12:27:34 PM
I surveyed research on bird flu last year, and concluded that the world was at a small but significant risk of a pandemic that would cause millions of human deaths. But who cares about people--let's focus on economic impacts. Surprisingly, the Spanish Flu of 1918 cannot be seen in the GDP data. I have a PowerPoint presentation on the subject if anyone is interested.
Posted by: Bill Conerly at Dec 26, 2006 1:01:20 PM
We do not yet know enough about what makes an influenza strain become capable of pandemic infection in people. Therefore we are pretty much guessing on the odds of whether H5N1 will become pandemic in humans.
Posted by: Randall Parker at Dec 28, 2006 7:47:09 PM
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