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The headlines the papers have been using to scare people today have been to do with the H5N1 strain of avian flu, which has apparently reached Sweden. According to a poll they say they've done, more than half the responders described themselves as "afraid" or worse. Of the flu, that is.
So I thought I'd dig up some actual numbers on this flu. And here they are.
Total number of confirmed human deaths since 1 January 2003 (according to the WHO, as of 27 February 2006): 93.
Total population of the countries in which those deaths have occured (according to the CIA World Factbook, as of 10 January 2006): 1806610172
That is, roughly one dead person per twenty million inhabitants over the course of the past three years. As a comparison, the number of people killed in traffic accidents in the 15 pre-expansion EU countries in the year 2004 alone came to about 1700 per twenty million inhabitants. If we expand that to the 2003-2006 period, we get the fact that...
So far, ordinary cars are over five thousand times as deadly as the "killer avian flu".
Please keep this in mind the next time you see a paper trying to scare you into buying a copy.
So I thought I'd dig up some actual numbers on this flu. And here they are.
Total number of confirmed human deaths since 1 January 2003 (according to the WHO, as of 27 February 2006): 93.
Total population of the countries in which those deaths have occured (according to the CIA World Factbook, as of 10 January 2006): 1806610172
That is, roughly one dead person per twenty million inhabitants over the course of the past three years. As a comparison, the number of people killed in traffic accidents in the 15 pre-expansion EU countries in the year 2004 alone came to about 1700 per twenty million inhabitants. If we expand that to the 2003-2006 period, we get the fact that...
So far, ordinary cars are over five thousand times as deadly as the "killer avian flu".
Please keep this in mind the next time you see a paper trying to scare you into buying a copy.
