Sunday, June 28, 2009

"Swine flu" confirmed cases hit 142 in South Korea; up 27 from two days earlier

Officially confirmed* H1N1 cases, though still small in number, jumped 23% in the last two days, to 142 as of June 26. So far, there have been no deaths reported. 

The 115 figure as of June 24 was itself a 9.5% jump from the previous report two days earlier.

The June 22 report of 105 cases was exactly a 25% jump from the 84 cases on June 19 (about which I did my most recent post on this). 

Meanwhile, the US has reported a total 21,449 cases and 87 deaths, meaning the fatality rate is holding steady in the US at about 0.4% (1 death in 250 cases). The US cases are being updated less frequently than the Korean cases, with no new cases reported from the June 22 to June 26 period (two updates), but almost 4000 cases and 44 new deaths reported on June 22. 

Australia is also showing large leaps of over 10% in its number of cases, now at 3280 with three deaths. The cases in Australia and the US were the justification for declaring H1N1 a pandemic, which causes certain public health protocols to kick in, such as governmental release of money for developing and stocking vaccine. 

Next-door Japan is up to 1049 cases, a 156 increase from the previous week but, like Korea, with no deaths. Despite it's lower number, Japan's figure may be of more significance than Australia's or the US's because of the especially high rate of travel between the two countries. 

Japan and Korea have both remained especially diligent (though not perfect) about tracking down and then quarantining even possible cases, which may explain the low mortality rate so far (currently zero — knock on wood).

* "Officially confirmed" refers to those registered in WHO statistics for H1N1 infection (see links). 

1 comment:

  1. Okay, since you still don't seem to understand how meaningless your use of those analytic statistics is, consider this. (And I do understand that I am taking this from the same unreliable news sources I have accused you of doing.) So according to this news story - http://www.ajc.com/services/content/health/stories/2009/06/26/1million_swineflu_cases.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=9 - there are possibly 1 million cases of the current Influenza A(H1N1) flu virus in the United States alone. That would leave your mortality rate at 0.000087. Thus, as can plainly be seen from such a minute figure, this is clearly not a problem at all. In fact, we need take no precautions at all. Wander around in a group of infected people wiping their noses with their hands and then eating bananas. Breathe long and deep when someone sneezes nearby. This thing is barely deadly at all.

    Or maybe, just maybe, we need to WAIT UNTIL WE HAVE ENOUGH OF A POPULATION BASE IN THIS CONTINUALLY EVOLVING FLU-INFECTED POPULATION THAT DAILY UPDATES DON'T MAKE HUGE CHANGES IN ANY ANALYTIC STATISTICS BEFORE WE GO PUBLISHING SUCH STATISTICS. But that is just a thought.

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