Reply #10: Yes, I agree that there were many deaths ... [View All]

[Techn0Girl]

After Oct 10 as you rightly point out.
Oct was the middle and end of a large flu outbreak.

by your post we have 150 total pediatric deaths by influenza so far by your figures from the CDC site which I assumed were accurate until I looked at the reports myself at:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/fluactivity.htm

It appears that you made a mistake or perhaps your writing was unclear. There are 127 deaths of flu total for those weeks out of which some 30 or so were from flu other than H1N1.

It remains to be seen however whether this number will significantly increase over the next 12 months. Will it go to 175? Will it go to 200? Higher? We don't know. For all we know this could be the end of flu related deaths for the most part this season.

We don't know.

But even if the numbers go up by another 80 over the course of the season (200 total) then we still have only about 100 more pediatric deaths than would occur in a normal flu year.

I'm not saying this is not insignificant - I am saying that this is just not the national disaster that some people are making it out to be.

Contextually bicycles kill 100 children in a given year (that link I gave earlier). So even if we have 200 pediatric deaths this season which seems perhaps(?) close to the upper limit then what is happening is that H1N1 is causing about the same number of additional pediatric deaths - as do bicycles.

I am just trying to put this into a reasonable context and I thank you for your numbers. I do think it is important to keep track of what is really happening.