We need some real facts based on past and present statistics to be put out by unbiased assessment and that should exclude the current scaremongering currently provided by the media frenzy that seems designed to instil as much panic as possible.
Considering that more than ten or twenty thousand times the current flu death numbers are killed on our global roads each year there is a real need to get this whole scenario into some degree of subjectivity and perspective.

Dennis

The mortality rate could be much lower than 1% in fact if the detection rate is low in Mexico. Problem is we don’t know how many people were infected but only had mild symptoms.

You state that Cases in Mexico number around 1600 according to Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova. This is probably just a count of individual cases where swine flu infection is suspected. This is not an estimate of how many people are infected. This is probably more likely to be in the tens of thousands say medical authorities (which means a wider spread but also a lower lethality (for reasons given above).

This is a serious point that is being missed in a lot of the discussion about swine flu. We do not yet have any reliable estimates of numbers infected. The numbers in the media (and on wikipedia) are only confirmed cases and specific people suspected to be infected and there are reasons to believe these are just the tip of the iceberg in Mexico and possibly also substantial underestimates elsewhere (the CDC thinks this is the case already in the US).

Outside of Mexico thousands of people are now confirmed with symptoms but only a couple (possibly three) have died so far. The data is of poor quality as it is biased towards a very young age group (58% of age <18) and deaths may be still to occur amongst the more recent confirmed cases. Never the less this rate points to a fatality rate more like 0.1% (with high quality treatment). Of course that might depend on ready access to intensive care for pneumonia cases. [Disclaimer: I am not an epidemiologist and this is just a rough back of envelope calculation]

I think your “Should we be worried?” question and your reference to poverty districts of Mexico reveal a western perspective (I assume you are from a western countrty). I’m a westerner too but I think that the reader in Zimbabwe, Kenya or even India should be much more worried than we have cause to be. Much of the world lacks adequate tamiflu and antibiotic stocks, have low quality detection procedures, have few beds and fewer intensive care units. The death rates will be higher for them and the disruption any pandemic causes could kill more people still.

You have your hunch re swine flu and the WHO have theres. As I write the WHO confirmed cases show no decline in their increase, in fact they appear to be increasing faster if anything. I’m inclined to agree with the WHO based on my reading around the subject but mostly because they have a greater understanding of the situation than either of us.

I also disagree with your comparison to SARS. Even a mild pandemic (equivalent to a seasonal flu) would kill 100 times the number that SARS ever killed.